More teeth to ST status demand
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, June 23 2015 : The Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee of Manipur has decided to stage a protest demonstration at Keishampat on June 25 ahead of the Manipur Legislative Assembly's monsoon session in pursuit of their demand for inclusion of Meitei in the Scheduled Tribe list of the country.

Speaking to media persons at Manipur Press Club here today, the committee's president Prof Yumnam Mohendro said that they have been asking the Government to include Meitei in the ST list since the past three years but to no avail so far.

A memorandum was submitted to the Governor and the Chief Minister of Manipur in 2012 .

Subsequent upon the memorandum, the PMO referred the matter to the Tribal Affairs Ministry.

The Minister sent a written intimation to the State Government seeking details of Meitei ethnography together with a socio-economic survey report.

But the State Government has been sleeping over the Ministry's letter till date, Mohendro decried.

On the other hand, six communities of Assam including Tai Ahoms and tea tribes were lobbying with the Central Government to include them in the ST list.

Now the Central Government has initiated due process to recognise the six communities as Scheduled Tribes.

Once these six communities are given official recognition as ST tribes, only Meiteis would remain as non-ST community in the entire North East region, Prof Mohendro said.

He then urged all the legislators of the State to take up the issue in the Assembly session which begins from June 26 .

The committee general secretary Col (retd) Laishram Lokendra said that their demand is not guided by the lure of quota system entitled to STs.

The committee has its own vision document and the Meiteis identify themselves as an indigenous community of Manipur.

However, the word indigenous is not found anywhere in the Constitution of India although the list of STs is incorporated under Article 342(1) .

The first demand of the committee is Constitutional recognition of Meiteis as indigenous people of Manipur.

Lokendra said.

Just like tribal land, ancestral land of Meiteis should be declared as scheduled area under the Fifth Schedule.

The Constitutional division between the Meiteis and hill people should be removed so as to bring all the communities to a uniform status.

There may be questions and arguments regarding when Meitei became a tribe but the 1891 census reported Meiteis as forest tribes of Manipur.

The term given to Meiteis changed to main tribe of Manipur in the 1901 census.

The demand for inclusion of Meitei in ST list is quite legitimate as the word tribe has many political and administrative connotations, Lokendra asserted.

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