India, Feb. 14 -- On Thursday, hours before the Centre imposed President's Rule in Manipur, Hotel Imphal in Manipur's capital was buzzing.

On the second floor, legislators were meeting Sambit Patra, the man appointed by the central Bharatiya Janata Party leadership to avert a constitutional crisis and form a new BJP-led government in Manipur after the chief minister N Biren Singh resigned.

Which wasn't surprising. If anything is happening in Manipur - and lots is - it's happening at the Hotel Imphal. The first floor houses the office of the Commission of Inquiry(CoI) that is tasked with finding the cause of the ethnic violence that has roiled the state, off and on, for two years.

And, until six months ago, the ground floor housed a spe...