UKHRUL: Thadou Inpi Manipur (TIM) has criticised the State Government’s follow up meeting with only the Campaign for Just and Fair Delimitation (JFD) and 14 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) after the two day Consultative Meeting-cum-Seminar on Demographic Profile of Manipur organized by the State Government.
According to TIM, the original Seminar was meant to be a statewide consultation, open to representatives from all communities and organisations to share their views and recommendations. One take-home message from that seminar, TIM adds, is that because of the ongoing law and order crisis in the State and the continued displacement of people, it is not realistic to conduct a credible Census at this time.
TIM said it has a high regard for both JFD (under COCOMI) and the 14 CSOs, but it was important for the follow-up discussion to involve all CSOs, not just these, to reinforce the inclusive spirit of the original Seminar organised by the Home Department and to question the fairness and representation of the full consultative process.
The organisation also had raised a serious administrative short-fall, which is the absence of senior officials like Chief Secretary and Home Secretary from the two day Seminar. TIM said that this omission undermined the credibility of the exercise, and that the hurried and apparently under-prepared nature of the conduct of the Seminar suggested that it was a formality rather than true consultation especially when the Census was said to be set to commence on 17 August 2026.
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TIM urged the Cabinet led by chief minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh to drop plans of garnering support from the right kind of organisations for Census 2027, and instead, demand the Union Government to delay the Census in Manipur until a normal situation is restored. The organisation said that it did not want the accuracy and integrity of Manipur’s demographic records to be sacrificed to meet the timelines.
“Any Census conducted without the restoration of normalcy, effective governance, the safe rehabilitation of all internally displaced persons (IDPs), the deletion of ‘Any Kuki tribes’ from the Scheduled Tribes List of Manipur through the due constitutional process, and the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would lack credibility and public confidence, and would compromise the integrity and historical demographic record of Manipur” TIM added. In this regard, TIM has called on the Central Government to postpone or cancel the Census in Manipur till the above conditions are achieved.
