Part of the Manipur Crisis Chronicle. Every claim carries a cited source; contested numbers are shown with their dates, never merged. This installment covers 1–31 March 2025.
Month two of President's Rule ran on two clocks: the disarmament ledger, which closed on its extended deadline, and the roads, which closed around it. The month's official register (surrender counts, a "peaceful" Manipur, budget presented from Delhi) ran alongside fresh inter-community violence in Churachandpur and a widening AFSPA blanket.
The surrender drive inherited from February closed in March. [181][181][181][183][184][182][183][184][182][184] Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla had on February 20 urged warring groups to voluntarily surrender looted and illegally held weapons within seven days, assuring no punitive action would be taken.[181] On the final day of that ultimatum (February 27), Arambai Tenggol members surrendered 246 arms at the 1st Manipur Rifles battalion ground in Imphal.[181] During the seven-day period, more than 300 weapons were surrendered by the public, primarily in the valley districts.[181][183][184] Bhalla then extended the deadline to 4 pm on March 6 following demands from people in both hill and valley areas for additional time.[182][183][184] Chief Secretary P.K. Singh had earlier said the seven-day window was enough "if one wants to give up arms" and that forces would act after expiry.[182] The administration called the extension "the last opportunity for everyone concerned to contribute to peace, communal harmony, the future of our youth, and the security of our society".[184]
Surrenders continued through the window in batches: 42 more firearms and cartridges were handed over on March 1 in five districts (Imphal West and East, Churachandpur, Bishnupur, Tamenglong), alongside a search-operation haul at Sairemkhul of an INSAS LMG, an AK-56, three SLR rifles, a 9mm SMG carbine, a .303 rifle, a DBBL gun and grenades, and the dismantling of five illegal bunkers in the Kangpokpi hills.[183] On March 4, 33 arms were surrendered in Churachandpur, Thoubal, Imphal East, Imphal West and Bishnupur districts (ITNE),[182] and 32 more in Churachandpur, Imphal East and Kangpokpi (The Hindu).[184] A Manipur Police headline listed by ITNE counted "over 1,000 illegal arms" given up during the whole surrender period — a total the chronicle has not verified against an individual article.[185][unverified] The Hindu's March 6 report contains an internal date slip: it calls the deadline's eve "Thursday (March 5, 2025)" while stating the deadline as "till 4 pm on March 6" (March 4, 2025 was a Tuesday); the March 6 deadline, consistent across three other sources, is used here.[182][183][184]
The Kuki-Zo counter-reading was registered the day after the AT surrender. [181][181][181] In a joint statement (February 28), the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) and the Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU) dismissed the surrender as a "mere gesture" and a "calculated effort to enhance their public image", argued that 246 arms is only 5% of the 6,000 weapons looted from Imphal Valley, accused Arambai Tenggol of responsibility for more than 230 Kuki-Zo community deaths, and reiterated the demand for a separate administration.[181] The statement's own arithmetic frames the surrender as theatre: the figure used for comparison, 6,000 weapons looted from the valley, is a community claim, not a verified inventory.[181] For reference, Security Adviser Kuldiep Singh had stated in September 2024 that 2,681 weapons, including 1,200 looted from police armories, had been recovered.[181]
On March 1, Amit Shah chaired the first Manipur security review since President's Rule, in New Delhi, with Governor Bhalla, the Manipur Security Adviser, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, the Eastern Command's Army Commander, and the Directors-General of BSF, CRPF and Assam Rifles in attendance.[179] He directed free movement of people on all roads from March 8, "stricte[st] actions" against obstructors, early completion of fencing at Manipur's Myanmar border entry points, and dismantling of the drug network.[179][180] ITNE relayed the same meeting with a directive list adding a crackdown on extortion, and stated the conflict's toll in its own words: "over 250 lives".[180]
On March 7, CoTU rejected the plan: the Federations of Civil Society's planned march into hill districts was a "blatant breach" of buffer zones, the "free movement" proposal "misrepresent[ed] ground realities" and perpetuated "radical Meitei narratives", and the committee demanded separate administration under Article 239A of the Constitution.[185]
Violence on March 8 in Kangpokpi killed one local, Lalgouthang Singsit — the name enters the record via the MHA-meeting report; no first-hand account of that day's events was captured this run (gap flagged).[187] Kuki-Zo protesters blocked National Highways 2 and 37 to commercial vehicles; on March 11-12 the blockade was in its fourth consecutive day.[187]
On March 11 and 12, MHA officials met the two communities separately: adviser A.K. [187][191][187][191] Mishra met the Kuki-Zo Council, Zomi Council and CoTU representatives in Churachandpur, and a Meitei joint delegation (FOCS, AMUCO, COCOMI) in Imphal, informing both of a 13-point Central action plan.[187][191] The three-hour Churachandpur meeting produced no "concrete decision" and was adjourned; leaders "stood firm on their stand and so did MHA officials".[187] The two meetings are the factual kernel behind the government's later claim that "dialogue" had begun.[191]
On March 11, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Manipur budget for 2025-26 in the Lok Sabha — ₹35,103.90 crore of expenditure, up from the ₹32,656.81 crore revised estimate — explaining that under the Article 356 Proclamation of February 13, "the powers of the Legislature of the State of Manipur are exercisable by or under the authority of Parliament".[186] She sought a Vote on Account for the first six months of 2025-26.[186] Displaced- persons allocations: ₹15 crore for temporary shelter, ₹35 crore housing, ₹100 crore relief operations, ₹7 crore compensation; ₹2,866 crore for police personnel incentives in sensitive areas; fiscal deficit estimated at 3.42% of GSDP.[186]
The Hindu's MHA-meetings page carried a related headline — "Finance Minister announces ₹500-crore corpus for strife-torn Manipur" — as an observed title only; the corpus announcement itself was not fetched (gap flagged).[187]
On March 17, CJI Sanjiv Khanna's three-judge bench signalled that the criminal trials in the 27 CBI-investigated Manipur ethnic-violence cases — heinous offences including rape and murder, with pre-trial processes already in Guwahati since the August 2023 transfer — would "naturally" be held there.[188] One of the cases is the sexual assault of two women seen paraded naked in the viral video.[188] The same order extended the Justice Gita Mittal committee's tenure to July 31.[188]
The same day, the Court granted the Centre three months to carry out the delimitation exercise in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur.[195] On March 25, representatives of at least 13 parties (BJP and Congress stayed away; NPP, JD(U), CPI(M), RPI, Manipur Peoples' Party and others present) resolved to urge deferral of delimitation "till the errors in the 2001 Census are rectified".[195]
On March 25, the NSCN (I-M) told the BSF not to use Naga-inhabited areas as a "dumping ground" for Kuki extremists or immigrants, alleging BSF had been transporting people from Churachandpur to Ukhrul's Litan village and guarding "the Kuki militants' camp at Molhang Kuki village"; the BSF denied any such role.[192] The Molhang Kuki village reference echoes a January COCOMI allegation about security-force supplies diverted there — a separate, earlier claim, cited in installment 021.[192]
On March 16 night, an assault on a Hmar leader at Zenhang was followed by clashes.[189] On the evening of March 18 — "hours after the apex bodies of both communities agreed to maintain peace" — Hmars opposed a Zomi group's hoisting of their community flag; the clashes that followed killed Lalropui Pakhumate, 53, on the outskirts of Churachandpur town.[189] Curfew followed; the Zomi Students' Federation declared an indefinite emergency shutdown; the district administration issued a second public appeal; the DC, Dharun Kumar S., said no one would be allowed to take the law into their own hands.[189] The same day, Kuki, Zomi and Hmar civil society organisations issued two joint statements — signed by the Kuki Students' Organisation and the Zomi Students' Federation — committing to non-violence, dialogue, and churches discouraging any participation in violence.[190] This is an intra- Zo fracture, not the Meitei-Kuki front: both sides of this clash are Kuki-Zo communities, and it follows the December 2023 burial-naming clash recorded in installment 008.[189]
On March 30, the Union extended AFSPA across Manipur for six months from April 1, 2025, declaring the "entire state of Manipur, excluding the areas falling under the jurisdiction of the following 13 police stations in five districts" as disturbed areas; the act was extended in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland as well.[194] The exempted stations fall in Imphal West and Imphal East districts among others.[194] The reach is notable against the record: in November 2024, AFSPA had been reimposed in just six police-station limits (installment 019); the March 2025 notification is whole-state-minus-13.[194]
On March 21, Shah told the Rajya Sabha that "Manipur is peaceful now, dialogue between both the communities has started", and that he would give a detailed response when tabling the President's Rule proclamation the next week.[191] On March 28-29, at the Times Now Summit, he said: "Now situation is relatively peaceful. Normal life has resumed... [191][193][193] There is no reason for worry now", argued President's Rule was imposed "when there was an appropriate time", and contextualised the violence as not the state's first such episode, recalling past strife lasting "three to four years".[193] ITNE's account of the same remarks carries a fresh toll: "More than 260 people have been killed" — up from its own December 2024 figure of 258; The Hindu's March boilerplate throughout the month still reads "more than 250". The two are shown here, not merged.[193]
Register split is by statement-carriage, not label: all four surrender outlets use near-identical "ethnic violence" boilerplate for the death toll (tone-scan 023a found zero label variance in bodies; ITNE's text extractor bleeds sidebar titles, a tooling artifact, not a framing signal).[182][183][184] Hindu carried the ITLF/COTU counter-arithmetic in full and the Kuki students' memorandum; ITNE carried CoTU's rejection and the Churachandpur peace appeals. The government's register ("peaceful", "no reason for worry", "appropriate time") is relayed verbatim by both Hindu and ITNE across three separate appearances (March 1 review, March 21 RS, March 29 summit) — no outlet printed a direct rebuttal in the same pages (the Congress rebuttal, if any, was not captured this run).[179][191][193] First-draft observation: the "free movement" frame entered the record via the March 1 review in both outlets simultaneously; the counter-frame ("5% of 6,000") was set by the ITLF/COTU statement. The March 8 Kangpokpi death is referenced but its first-hand reporting was not retrieved (CDX ITNE items for that week are 2023 recrawls; gap logged).[187]
Hindu 28 Feb / 2 Mar / 6 Mar, ITNE.[181][183][184]
unverified as an article.[185][unverified]
31 Jul — Hindu 17 Mar.[188]
ITNE 30 Mar.[194]