Dry Manipur’s only Assembly constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes is voting for ‘ yu’, a distilled rice wine. Sekmai, the constituency, derives its name from Sekmai, a village of more than 4,000 home-based brewers, about 20 km north of State capital Imphal. Tipplers associate the name more with the type of ‘ yu’ the villagers brew.
Manipur has been divided since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government headed by Nongthombam Biren Singh had decided in June 2017 to pave the way for exporting branded country liquor that is allowed to be sold on a small scale, unlike the India-made foreign liquor.
