New Delhi: In a new dawn in Manipur’s political landscape, 62-year-old Yumnam Khemchand Singh has taken oath as the Chief Minister of the ethnic strife-hit northeastern state on Wednesday.
Khemchand hails from Meitei community
Earlier on Tuesday, Singh was elected the Legislature Party Leader of the BJP in Manipur. The elected government has been restored in the state, which has been hit with intense violence in recent times. Khemchand, who belongs to the Meitei community, took the oath after the President’s rule in Manipur was revoked before the new government’s formation.
Singh has two Deputy Chief Ministers, one from the Kuki-Zo community and another from the Naga community. The one from the Kuki-Zo community is Nemcha Kipgen, and the Naga community is being represented by Losii Dikho.
President’s rule revoked in Manipur
Earlier, the Union Home Ministry issued a notification announcing that President Droupadi Murmu had revoked the President’s Rule in Manipur with immediate effect, which now paves the way for the formation of a new elected government in the state. Notably, the post of the CM was vacant ever since N Biren Singh resigned on February 9, 2025, as the state witnessed a prolonged period of ethnic violence. After a few days, presidential rule was imposed in Manipur, and it went on for about a year.
In the 60-member Manipur Assembly, the BJP has 37 MLAs at present. In the 2022 Assembly elections, 32 candidates of the BJP won, while the JD(U) had won six seats. Out of them, five later defected to the BJP. Moreover, one seat fell vacant after a serving MLA died.
The gesture of Khemchand Singh
Khemchand Singh is a two-time MLA and has been elected from the Singjamei Assembly seat both in 2017 and in 2022. In March 2017, he was elected as the Speaker of the Manipur Legislative Assembly, and he served in that post for a full five-year term.
He became a minister in the Biren Singh cabinet after the 2022 Assembly polls and later got several portfolios, including Rural development and panchayati raj, municipal administration, housing development, and education, till the imposition of the President’s Rule. In December 2025, Singh visited Kuki-Zo villages in Ukhrul and Kamjong, in a Meitei politician’s first outreach effort across ethnic lines since violence began on May 3, 2023. That gesture by Singh proved to be significant in Manipur’s politics.