India’s parliament on Wednesday authorised a no-confidence vote against Narendra Modi’s government by an alliance of opposition parties, to force the prime minister to address in detail concerns about ethnic clashes in the northeastern state of Manipur.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a clear majority of 301 members in the 542-seat lower house of parliament, so the no-confidence vote will not affect its stability.
The opposition instead wants to trigger a debate about violence in the remote, BJP-ruled Manipur state, where more than 130 people have been killed and 60,000 displaced since it began in early May. Approving the opposition motion, lower house speaker Om Birla said he would soon decide when the debate and vote would take place.
The ethnic tensions in the small state of 3.2 million people are seen as a rare security and political failure by Modi’s government, which will face a national election by May 2024. Further incidents of arson and the destruction of some abandoned houses, government offices and vehicles by armed mobs were reported from at least two districts of Manipur on Wednesday, a local police official said, asking not to be named. Modi had not commented in public about the violence until last week when videos showing two women being paraded naked and molested by a mob in Manipur sparked national outrage.
