Daijiworld Media Network - Imphal

Imphal, Feb 3: A senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who quietly emerged as one of the strongest internal critics of former chief minister N Biren Singh, Yumnam Khemchand Singh has now been chosen as the BJP’s chief ministerial face in strife-torn Manipur.

At 62, Khemchand is currently serving his second term as a member of the Manipur Legislative Assembly and is considered a trusted organisational leader within the party. A Meitei leader, he is also the only BJP MLA who proactively reached out to the Kuki-Zo community by visiting a relief camp in recent months, drawing attention amid the deep ethnic divide in the state.

Khemchand’s political journey runs parallel to Biren Singh’s in its early years. Both entered politics in 2002 as part of the Democratic Revolutionary People’s Party (DRPP), which was formed in the aftermath of protests by Meitei groups against the Government of India’s decision to extend the 1997 ceasefire with the Naga insurgent group NSCN(IM) “without territorial limits”. The clause was widely viewed as a threat to Manipur’s territorial integrity.

While Biren Singh was elected as an MLA in 2002 and later merged the DRPP with the Congress, Khemchand stayed out of the legislature for more than a decade. A senior taekwondo sportsperson and teacher who recently earned his 5th Dan black belt, he joined the BJP in 2013 and entered the Assembly in 2017 from the Singjamei constituency, becoming part of Manipur’s first-ever BJP government.

In Biren Singh’s first term as chief minister, when most BJP MLAs were political newcomers, Khemchand was elected Speaker of the Manipur Legislative Assembly. After the BJP returned to power with a stronger mandate in 2022, he was inducted into the cabinet.

As public anger intensified in the Imphal Valley over the government’s inability to effectively address the ongoing conflict, legislators increasingly became targets of public fury. In October 2023, Khemchand’s residence in Imphal was attacked with a grenade, highlighting the deteriorating law-and-order situation.

Despite being part of Biren Singh’s ministry, Khemchand emerged as a key figure in the internal BJP dissent that gathered momentum through 2024. Along with Assembly Speaker Th. Satyabrata Singh, he was among the most senior leaders who pressed the party’s central leadership for a change in leadership. Both were summoned to Delhi shortly before Biren Singh’s resignation, and Khemchand is learnt to have warned that the government could collapse if the chief minister was not replaced.

Following Biren Singh’s resignation, President’s Rule was imposed in Manipur on February 13 last year. In the months that followed, as pressure mounted on the Centre to restore an elected government, Khemchand was among those advocating a political revival in the state.

Though he largely maintained a low public profile during the crisis, Khemchand returned to the spotlight in December 2025 when he visited a relief camp in a Kuki village in Ukhrul district and interacted with displaced families. While Kuki-Zo groups criticised the visit as an irresponsible publicity exercise, political observers described it as a rare outreach attempt across entrenched ethnic lines.

Political observers say Khemchand is viewed as a trusted RSS-backed leader within the Manipur BJP and as a relatively liberal Meitei, qualities that could work in his favour as the state searches for political stability and reconciliation.