Collective effort inevitable for safeguard of indigenes
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: July 11, 2022 -

BY knocking at the door of the Prime Minister and urging for initiation of relevant process to facilitate conduct of an exercise for maintaining a National Register of Citizenship (NRC) for the state, student bodies namely
All Manipur Students' Union,
All Naga Students' Association Manipur,
Apunba Ireipakki Maheiroi Sinpanglup,
Democratic Students' Alliance of Manipur,
Kangleipak Students' Association,
Manipuri Students' Federation and
Students' Union of Kangleipak
have rung out the message to the government of Manipur that appropriate measures shall have to be taken up to avert possible drastic demographic changes in the state.

For the past many decades, the focus of many a civil societies had been on framing a law to stop the unrestrained influx of migrant workers especially as their presence was significantly high in Imphal areas.

The burgeoning population of non-natives in the market places and at various residential pockets in the twin capital districts makes it clear that there has been continuous inflow of both economic migrants and infiltrators, consequently unnerving the civil societies which have been most vocal in demanding effective policy to prevent imminent outnumbering of the indigenes by the non-locals sooner than later.

On their part, successive governments tried to calm the nerves of agitated civil societies and worked for reintroduction of the inner line permit system or a similar mechanism to keep a tab on entry or settlement of non-natives in the state, which the BJP-led government ultimately reaped the fruit and took the credit when President Ramnath Kovind formally announced implementation of the ILP system in December 2019.

In-spite of its implementation, there has been strong apprehension that with or without documents related to ILP system, uncountable numbers of non-locals have already found access into the state.

Regardless of extension of the inner line permit system, which is expected to aid in checking illegal entries, it was obvious that identifying the non-natives, who are already settling in the state, would remain an even more onerous task.

Indeed, re-introduction of the ILP system provided some sense of relief to the indigenous communities who feared of being outnumbered in their own homeland, and had been seeking initiation of the NRC for such an exercise was seed as the only means to enumerate the exact population figure and identify the non-locals.

As such, the joint memorandum of the seven student bodies submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging for conduct of NRC by setting up a State Population Commission demonstrated implementation of the ILP system can't guarantee protection of the indigenous people from illegal immigrants.

Among other points mentioned in their representation, the student bodies' observation that unnatural increase in the population of outsiders might be due to some naturalised communities and tribes abetting migration of cognate tribes/communities from neighbouring countries and states could be construed as a confirmation that there are certain group of people who can't be trusted when it comes to safeguard of the indigenes' interest.

However, it is desired that organisations of these left-out communities and tribes should also be taken into confidence and brought on board to demand NRC or check infiltration for keeping them out of the loop might lead to stealthy retributory actions.