The nationwide furore over an alleged leak in the NEET-UG medical entrance exam reached Manipur on July 22, as the ruling BJP and opposition Congress held competing demonstrations in Imphal and traded accusations over who bears responsibility for the crisis.

Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh led a sit-in by BJP MLAs and party leaders at Thambal Shanglen in Nityapat Chuthek, accusing the Congress of using the paper-leak controversy to manufacture unrest rather than engage in serious debate. Students, he said, “deserve solutions, certainty and responsible leadership, not political theatrics,” and he argued that democracy should not be undermined through “manufactured chaos, deliberate disruption or misinformation.” In a Facebook post, Singh said the BJP remained committed to the rule of law and to Manipur’s “welfare, peace and progress.”

Separately, the Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee staged its own protest in Imphal, directed at the detention in New Delhi of Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, MP Priyanka Gandhi and other Congress leaders during demonstrations over the same NEET issue. An MPCC delegation led by party president and former chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh subsequently submitted a four-point memorandum to Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla at Raj Bhavan. The memorandum sought the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on moral grounds, demanded a full parliamentary discussion of the paper-leak issue, called for FIRs against students who joined the Delhi protests to be withdrawn, and urged the Centre to act to restore “peace and normalcy” in Manipur as part of the wider “Save Manipur” campaign.

The same day, Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam held a separate press conference at the BJP’s Manipur Pradesh office in Imphal addressing the Delhi protests, according to photographs and captions distributed by IANS. Some regional aggregators have reported that Konthoujam used the briefing to argue that the “Save Manipur” framing used by protesters in Delhi risked misleading young people in the state; Sentinel NE was unable to confirm his exact wording against a primary transcript or recording and flags this specific attribution as less firmly sourced than the rest of this report.

NEET aspirants separately marched along Keishampat Road in Imphal on July 23 as part of the same wave of protests being held in cities across the country.