WMC urges CM to send requisite reports
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, June 24 2024:
The World Meetei Council (WMC) has once again urged Chief Minister N Biren to send the socio-economic and ethnography reports of Meetei/Meitei to the Centre by August 2024 so as to ensure the ethnic group gets the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status before the proposed delimitation in 2026 .
In a letter signed by its chairman Heigrujam Naba-shyam and addressed to the Chief Minister, the WMC said that the people will have no other option than to request all the legislators to change the Chief Minister if N Biren fails to send the reports.
Meanwhile, the WMC said that the delimitation of the Assembly and Parliamentary seats of all the States and Union Territories is scheduled to take place in 2026 .
Saying that the contemporary Manipur Assembly has 40 seats in the valley and 20 seats in the hills based on the 1971 census report, the council added that 69 percent of Manipur's population resided in the valley while the remaining 31 percent lived in the hills according to the 1971 census.
"Though the census does not provide community-wise population figures, various indices suggest that the Meetei population comprised approximately 60 percent of the total population of Manipur in the 1971 census report," the WMC added.
It further said that the census is conducted every ten years and the Meetei/Meitei population witnessed a sharp decline to just 44 per cent in the 2011 census owing to the low birth rate among the Meeteis and unchecked influx of migrants, especially from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Saying that Meetei/Meitei community adhered to the National Population Policy, the council maintained that the proposed delimitation however is set to penalize those who dutifully followed the National policy and reward those who didn't .
The 2026 delimitation is poised to victimize the Meeteis for being lawful citizens, it said and added that the only way to protect the identity of Meetei/Meitei is by enlisting the ethnic group in the ST list of the Constitution.
Regarding the current violence 'perpetrated' by Chin-Kuki terrorists, the WMC said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can stop the Chin-Kuki perpetrators anytime if he wishes, but for reasons unknown he has chosen not to.