Popular Manipuri actor Rajkumar Somendra quits BJP

Imphal: Celebrated Manipuri actor Rajkumar Somendra popularly known as 'Kaiku' on Thursday resigned from the primary membership of BJP over the state government’s "inept handling of the current ethnic turmoil and the brutal murder of two students", party sources said.

Kaiku, who has acted in around 400 films, submitted his resignation to the leadership of the party’s state unit even as its top leaders requested him to reconsider his decision.

A resident of Thangmeiband area in Imphal West, Kaiku contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as an Independent candidate and later joined the BJP in November 2021.

In his resignation letter, Kaiku said, "My priority is ‘public first and party second’ for which I applied my mind to incline with the public in these hard times."

It is disheartening to notice that the government is yet to take up proactive measures to resolve the unceasing public disorder besetting the state for more than four months now, said Kaiku.

"To be honest, I joined the BJP thinking that the party would bring a significant change in our state with its double-engine government. Of course, it brought changes in different sectors like tourism under CM N Biren Singh. With this in mind, I thought the central leaders would act swiftly over the ongoing issue and put to an end to the conflict and trusted them. But, the central leaders seem like paying no attention to the pain and misery of the people and they were against every expectation of the people," he said.

Kaiku appealed to all sections of society to bring an everlasting solution to the current turmoil.

"As I have left BJP, now I’m a free citizen to join the people’s campaign to restore public order," he said.

On the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, the actor said, "I have no specific decision on electoral politics but I’ll go together with the people to restore normalcy in the state."