Imphal:
An influential global umbrella body of Manipur’s Meitei community has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider carrying out the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Manipur before starting the process of delimitation.
The Supreme Court on March 17 gave the Centre three months to complete the delimitation exercise in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Assam, after raising concerns over the delay despite a 2020 presidential order rescinding the deferment of the process.
In a letter to PM Modi, the Meitei Alliance said it is important to develop a contextualised NRC framework for Manipur first to ensure that genuine citizens are safeguarded for sustainable political stability, security, and communal harmony.
“If [delimitation is] executed without first addressing key security and demographic concerns, this exercise risks derailing the ongoing peace efforts undertaken by the government, civil society, and the people of Manipur – especially children and youth, longing for security and stability,” the Meitei Alliance said.
Annexure B: Illegal Immigration and Changing demographic pic.twitter.com/cHiteGJKEy
— Meitei Alliance (@Me1teiAlliance) April 1, 2025
Referring to two old documents, the Meitei Alliance alleged “rampant illegal immigration of refugees” has been going on since India’s Independence and Manipur’s integration with the Indian Union.
It said one of the earliest official records of this issue is found in a letter written by the then MP P Haokip to the then Union Home Minister KC Pant on June 20, 1973, in which Mr Haokip acknowledged the presence of 1,500 refugee Kuki families from Burma (Myanmar) in Manipur since 1967.
Before this, the chairman and secretary of the Burma Kuki Refugees’ Association sent a letter to the relief and rehabilitation minister on February 15, 1973, asking for money and land for the Kuki refugee families, the Meitei Alliance said, referring to a second document. The Centre eventually gave Rs 3.92 lakh (approximately Rs 23 lakh in 2025 based on inflation data available till December 2024).
READ | Exclusive: Manipur Panel Began Identifying Immigrants 5 Weeks Before Clashes Began In May 2023
“… Under the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, illegal immigrants and refugees cannot be granted Indian citizenship. However, many illegal immigrants in Manipur are reportedly not only given citizenship but also enjoying Scheduled Tribes (ST) benefits, which not only violates the constitutional provisions but also encourages further illegal immigration into the state,” the Meitei Alliance said in the letter to PM Modi. “This underscores the urgent need for a review of citizenship records and updating the NRC in Manipur to identify and rectify wrongful inclusions, to ensure the interests of the indigenous communities are safeguarded and peaceful social harmony can be maintained.”
It said Manipur’s systematic constitutional breakdown needs intervention before proceeding with the delimitation exercise. The ongoing violence is not incidental, but rather fuelled by vested interests who want to prolong instability and enforce unconstitutional demands through terror, the Meitei Alliance alleged, and referred to two dozen Kuki militant groups that have signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement with the Centre and the state government.
“No peace can be achieved, nor can law and order be restored, as long as SoO-backed Kuki militant groups enjoy impunity by violating the ground rules of the agreements. Their leaders orchestrate violence while playing multiple deceptive roles to weaken Manipur’s integrity…” the Meitei Alliance said.
The Meitei Alliance is one of the two organisations – the other is a key civil body of the indigenous distinct tribe Thadou – that met for the first time on a common platform and for a common goal since the outbreak of ethnic violence in Manipur in May 2023. The Meitei Alliance and the Thadou Inpi Manipur on March 8 called the development a “significant and historic moment”.
The valley-dominant Meitei community and over a dozen distinct tribes collectively known as Kuki, who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, have been fighting since May 2023 over a range of issues such as land rights and political representation. Over 260 have died in the violence and nearly 50,000 have been internally displaced.
Among the many friction points in Manipur, the general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a land of their own carved out of Manipur.
Both sides have accused each other of attacking villages in the foothills.
READ | ‘Need To Find, Remove Illegal Immigrants Before Delimitation’: Manipur BJP MP
Kuki leaders and groups including militants that represent their tribes and signed the controversial SoO agreement have pointed at the ethnic clashes as the reason why they escalated their demand from an autonomous council to a separate administration, or a Union Territory with an assembly.
Meitei leaders termed this claim a lie, saying evidence about the demand for ‘Kukiland’ is widely available and goes back many years.
The World Kuki-Zo Intellectual Council (WKZIC) in a memorandum to Manipur Governor AK Bhalla on January 15 said the Kuki tribes have been demanding a state “since 1946-47.”
Kuki ‘civil’ groups ITLF and CoTU, their 10 MLAs, and the nearly two dozen militant groups have come on the same stage in demanding a separate administration and working in tandem – erasing all lines between the civilian and the armed militant.
