THE growing push to implement a National Register of Citizens in Manipur prior to the census carries deep, dangerous implications that threaten to marginalise the Kuki-Zo community. Under the guise of identifying illegal immigrants, this administrative drive increasingly resembles a targeted policy aimed at disenfranchising tribal populations who have inhabited these hills for generations. The core of this issue lies in a complete disregard for unique tribal history and political development. Historically, the tribal hill regions were never under the direct rule of Meitei kings; they governed themselves independently through an ancient, self-contained system of traditional chieftainship that survives to this day. Expecting tribal villagers to produce rigid paper records from mid-century decades ignores the harsh physical reality of life in the remote hills during that era. In the 1950s, modern infrastructure was virtually non-existent, with no motorable roads or civil registries connecting deep hill settlements to central administrative hubs. Demanding documented proof of residence from a period when state machinery had no physical presence or census reach across rugged mountain terrains is not just impractical, but fundamentally unfair and discriminatory.
This historical distortion becomes even clearer when examining the evolution of Manipur’s constitutional and political status within the Indian Union. The region merged with the Dominion of India on 15 October 1949 and became a Union Territory on 1 November 1956, before finally attaining full statehood on 21 January 1972 under the North-Eastern Areas Reorganisation Act. Expecting hill communities to conform to arbitrary cut-off dates established long before full statehood ignores the reality that administrative apparatus in the hills was extremely sparse during those formative years. This systemic oversight was explicitly recognised on 11 March 2021, when the Hill Areas Committee of the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed Resolution No. 38/2020. The committee highlighted severe procedural errors in declaring Protected Forests, Reserved Forests, and Wildlife Sanctuaries after 20 June 1972 without required HAC approval. By bypassing Article 371C of the Constitution, which safeguards scheduled matters in hill areas, these forest declarations violated statutory protocols. The HAC’s demand to align forest territorial maps with existing revenue district limits underlines how state policies have continuously been weaponised to challenge ancestral land ownership protected under traditional chieftainship.
In addition, framing the Kuki-Zo people as recent infiltrators weaponises administrative mechanisms to strip indigenous hill dwellers of their fundamental citizenship rights and socio-economic dignity. The joint delegation of civil society groups and tribal leaders travelling to New Delhi, along with Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh’s commitment to debate the NRC in the upcoming Assembly session, fails to address these deep historical inequalities. Imposing a rigid verification process without acknowledging historical isolation, lack of literacy, and absent state infrastructure in early decades will inevitably render thousands of genuine tribal citizens stateless. Disregarding custom-based land tenure systems while forcing arbitrary cut-off dates creates a hostile climate of suspicion and displacement. Rather than pursuing an exclusionary policy that deepens communal divides, central and state authorities must honour special constitutional guarantees, protect ancestral tribal lands, and ensure that historical neglect is never used as a pretext to deny the rights and identity of the Kuki-Zo community.
~ Zogam Today | Editorial | 21 August 2026
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