The request for 30 additional CAPF companies includes specialised CoBRA commandos and Rapid Action Force units, with the state seeking greater capacity for counter-insurgency, area domination and law-and-order operations.
BY PC Bureau
October 8: The Manipur government has asked the Union Home Ministry for about 3,000 more central paramilitary personnel — 30 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces, including CoBRA and Rapid Action Force units — to widen counter-insurgency and area-domination operations. The request is pending with the MHA.
The demand would add to a grid that is already among the densest in the country. Official strength is not published in real time, but mid-2026 assessments put central deployment at more than 300 companies, or roughly 30,000 personnel: about 206 companies of the CRPF, about 100 of the BSF, six of the SSB, five of the ITBP, and more than two dozen Assam Rifles companies or equivalent units, besides the Army and Manipur Police. A CAPF company is roughly 100 personnel. In April, more than 275 CAPF companies were in the state before about 85 companies — some 8,500 personnel — were withdrawn for the West Bengal polls and later returned.
The request comes more than three years after ethnic violence erupted in May 2023 between Meitei groups in the Imphal Valley and Kuki-Zo groups in the hills. More than 260 people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced. Buffer zones, movement restrictions and arms recoveries have not stopped intermittent killings, ambushes or extortion. Since early 2026, friction between Kuki-Zo and Naga groups in parts of the hills has added to the older valley-hill divide.
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CoBRA was inducted as the Centre’s specialised response. After large parts of the Maoist belt were declared under control at the end of March 2026, the MHA moved two CRPF Commando Battalions for Resolute Action — 210 Battalion from Assam and 207 Battalion from West Bengal, about 2,000 commandos — to Manipur under what officers called a “Mission Manipur” task. The first contingents arrived in early June. Raised in 2008–09 for jungle warfare against Left-wing extremists, the units were tasked with intelligence-led raids, bunker clearance, arms seizures and area domination in the forested hills and vulnerable valley pockets, on requests from Manipur Police.
The deployment has not contained the violence. On July 6, suspected militants ambushed an Assam Rifles convoy in Ukhrul, killing two personnel and injuring others after an IED blast and gunfire. The CRPF then rewrote its Manipur procedures for regular companies and the new CoBRA units: movement only in bulletproof vehicles, no unplanned troop movement, mandatory route sanitisation and tighter commander accountability. About 100 armoured vehicles were sent in, and CoBRA’s brief was widened from counter-insurgency to law-and-order duties. Later unrest showed that the specialist battalions had not broken the cycle of attacks.
Officials say the extra 3,000 personnel are meant to fill those gaps — more CoBRA for difficult terrain, the RAF for public-order flashpoints, and other CAPF units for routes, vulnerable sites and area domination. Whether the MHA can spare them is open. Central forces remain committed elsewhere, and Manipur’s own grid was thinned as recently as the Bengal polls. The file is now with the ministry.
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