Nemcha Kipgen is a niece of four-time legislator Thangminlen Kipgen.[2] She is married to S.T. Thangboi Kipgen, the chairman of the Kuki National Front (President), a militant group that has been under a Suspension of Operations agreement with the Government of India since 2008.[3][4]
Political career
2012–2017
Nemcha Kipgen contested and won the legislative assembly seat from the Kangpokpi constituency in 2012, on a ticket of Manipur State Congress Party (MSCP).[5] She came up from the ranks of the Sadar Hills District Demand movement of the Kuki people, which was mainly organised by the women activists of the area.[6] MSCP, originally an off-shoot of Indian National Congress, merged back into Congress in 2014 along with its 5 legislators.[7]Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called for the disqualification of the legislators, but did not succeed.[8]
During the 2015 protests against the controversial "anti-tribal bills" passed by the state legislature, Nemcha Kipgen's house was set ablaze by protesters along with several other legislators and ministers.[9] In 2016, Kipgen was appointed as the chairperson of the state legislature's Committee on Welfare of Women and Children.[10]
2017–2023
In January 2017, a few months before the next Assembly election, Kipgen resigned from Congress and joined the BJP.[11] She retained her Kangpokpi seat in the 2017 election, beating her nearest rival by close to 2,300 votes.[12] She seconded the nomination of N. Biren Singh for the leader of the BJP legislative party,[13] leading his elevation to the Chief Minister. Kipgen was chosen as the Minister for Social Welfare and Cooperation in Biren Singh ministry.[14] She served in this post till 2020, when she was dropped during a Cabinet reshuffle. The women supporters of Kipgen in Kangpokpi protested the action, and burnt an effigy of Biren Singh.[15]
In the 2022 Assembly election, Nemcha Kipgen again won the seat from Kangpokpi, beating her nearest rival by close to 5,400 votes.[16] She was sworn in as a Cabinet minister along with Chief Minister Biren Singh,[17] and allocated the portfolios Commerce and Industry, Textiles and Cooperation in the ministry.[18]
2023–2025 Manipur violence
After the ethnic violence between Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities erupted in 2023, Nemcha Kipgen's official residence was burnt down in Imphal.[19] Kipgen moved to Kangpokpi and worked from her home till the end of the Biren Singh ministry in February 2025. In May 2023, Kipgen, along with other Kuki-Zo MLAs of Manipur, demanded "separate administration" for the Kuki-Zo inhabited areas because the Imphal Valley was "as good as death" for their people.[20] In August 2023, she was a signatory to a memorandum to the Prime Minister demanding the appointment of a separate Chief Secretary and a Director General of Police (DGP) for the Kuki-inhabited areas.[21][22] She was nominated to the peace panel in June 2023, but the panel never got off the ground.[23] In December 2024, Kipgen, along with other MLAs from the Kangpokpi district, condemned the violence perpetrated by the Meitei militias on the fringe areas of the Kangpokpi district.[24]
↑"BJP secures majority in Manipur, reduces other parties including Congress to single digits", Asian News International, 10 March 2022. ProQuest2637624821