ST status for Meeteis before train arrives, says STDCM
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, July 23 2021:
Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee of Manipur (STDCM) has said that Meitei/Meetei should be given Scheduled Tribe status before the train services reach Imphal.
According to a statement of STD-CM issued by its publicity secretary W Ananda Meetei, various forms of intense agitations have been launched demanding Constitutional safeguard for Meitei/Meetei, the most important indigenous community of Manipur, and mounting pressure in this regard on both governments of Manipur and India.
However, the state government is yet to forward necessary recommendation regarding the demand to the Government of India and is not even ready to send ethnographic and socio-economic survey report.
The main objective of STDCM's demand is to provide Constitutional safeguard for the Meitei/Meetei so that the valley area inhabited by the community could not be gifted/sold to non-indigenous community and inclusion of Meitei/Meetei in ST list to preserve the community's ethnic identity as per the Constitutional provision.
If clubbed in the ST list, Meitei/Meetei will be recognised as an indigenous community by the Constitution apart from granting Constitutional safeguard, Ananda said in the statement and reiterated the demand for inclusion of Meitei/ Meetei in the ST list before train reaches Imphal.
As part of a series of agitations launched to press the demand, around 30 volunteers of the Committee staged a protest under the banner 'No ST Status, No Rail Line' on September 6, 2019 at MSRTC complex where a railway office is located and police detained the protesters including working president and advisors till late night the same day.
Being a national project, construction of Jiribam-Imphal railway line is in progress and trial run of passenger train had already been done from Jiribam to Vhangaichungpao village in Tamenglong district on July 2 and there is possibility of completing the rail track construction till Imphal soon, the statement said, adding that a significant change particularly in movement of people and transportation of goods will be brought if train reaches Imphal.
Inflow of outsiders to the state in large numbers suddenly will also be another significant change when the train reaches Imphal and this heightens apprehension and anxiety among Meitei/Meetei about extinction of the community in their own land as the community is yet is to get any Constitutional safeguard, STDCM statement said and stressed the need for providing ST status to the community immediately and taking up relevant policy for protecting economic, employment, social security, land ownership and political power sharing of the Meitei/ Meetei community.
While appealing to the state government to send necessary recommendation for early inclusion of Meitei/Meetei in the ST list, the statement also urged experts to suggest mode of agitations through social media which could be launched by observing SOPs as physical protest could not be staged due to the ongoing pandemic.