Stand against border fencing : A look at the reality
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 04, 2025 -

The BJP at Delhi seems to be playing its card well.

Manipur is under President's Rule and the men at the centre of it all are Governor AK Bhalla, Chief Secretary PK Singh, DGP Rajiv Singh and Security Advisor Kuldiep Singh.

And the best man to send here and get a first hand ground report is no one but Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, not Union Home Minister Amit Shah or even Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai.

Such an arrangement falls in well with the present set up in the State and so Govind Mohan was here for two days, June 2 and June 3 and from the reports that The Sangai Express has been able to gather, Govind Mohan not only visited relief centres to get a first hand account of the state of the inmates at Churachandpur but also discussed the ongoing border fencing work with the Governor.

And if the BJP appears to have played its card well in sending the Union Home Secretary instead of a political leader, then the All Naga Students' Association, Manipur (ANSAM) also played its card well in striking out at what it thinks is the best moment.

Gherao all Government offices in the Naga dominated districts and so it was that Government offices were locked at Senapati, Tamenglong and Ukhrul to lodge their stand against the decision of the Government of India to fence the border and do away with the Free Movement Regime.

ANSAM and by extension the Nagas have their reason to. protest the border fencing as well as to do away with the Free Movement Regime, but the reason why the decision to fence the border has been taken should not be lost in the dust and din kicked up by the protest.

This is where it becomes important to study and understand why several Naga organisations have raised the call for a National Register of Citizens.

It is the Nagas who stand to lose out the most from the unchecked infiltration from across the border and this is especially true in the context of political representations in the State Assembly, job reservation and admission to different institutions.

It is for this very reason why a young man had taken the trouble of pointing out how the number of Naga MLAs has decreased with the passage of time while there has been a corresponding rise in the number of MLAs representing the Kuki community.

As the young writer put it, out of 10 tribal MLAs in the first Manipur Territorial Council (1962-1967) there were 8 Naga MLAs, 1 Paite MLA and 1 Thadou Kuki MLA.

The same break-up followed in the Manipur Territorial Assembly (1972-1973) and then in the first Manipur Legislative Assembly there were 13 Naga MLAs while only 6 represented the Kuki-Chin community.

In the second Manipur Legislative Assembly (1974 to 1979) the number of Naga MLAs declined while the number of Kuki-Chin MLAs increased to 8 and in the third Manipur Legislative Assembly (1980 to 1985) the number of Naga MLAs dipped to 10 while the number of Kuki-Chin MLAs increased to 9.

This is just about the number of representatives and a look at Kangpokpi over the last three decades reveal that the number of Kuki villages shot up from 179 villages in 1969 to 721 in 2023, which is an increase of 303 percentage, wrote the young writer.

Just some figures that have been quoted from a well researched write up by a young man and these figures should not be clouded by the din of protest against border fencing and the decision to scrap the FMR.

The term 'scrapping FMR' may also just be a misnomer, for what Delhi has done is put some check and balance measures and this should not be forgotten.

Manipur has suffered long enough due to the unchecked and unregulated entry from across the border and the spirit in the call to implement the National Register of Citizens should be respected and acknowledged.

True there are no reports of people from the Naga community criss-crossing the border and setting up new villages here, but the fact that an NRC has become a necessity should not be forgotten.

Let no one forget what a certain Mr Paolienlal Haokip had written back in 2002 giving a detailed account of the mass scale immigration from across the border during the Burmanisation programme of Ne Win.

The spirit behind the call to actuate the NRC should not be defeated.