ST tag for Meiteis | Manipur High Court withdraws contentious part of its order

Key paragraph removed from March 27, 2023 order that is said to have triggered the ongoing conflict; tribal bodies say the deletion does not change the effect of the order; their appeal to be heard by the HC on Thursday

Meitei community members during a peace rally in Imphal. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu

A Bench of the Manipur High Court on Wednesday modified its own March 27, 2023 order, ordering the removal of Paragraph 17(iii), which had instructed the Manipur government to consider the inclusion of Meiteis in the list of Scheduled Tribes. This direction is said to have triggered the ongoing ethnic conflict between the Meiteis and the tribal Kuki-Zo communities in the State. 

The contentious paragraph said that the State government “shall consider the case of the petitioners for inclusion of the Meetei/Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribe list, expeditiously…”, a direction that the Supreme Court of India had called into question when tribal bodies appealed the High Court’s order last year.

When the order was made public and within days of the violence breaking out, tribal bodies such as the All Manipur Tribal Students’ Union were quick to appeal the entirety of the March 2023 order in the High Court. But after a significant delay, the original Meitei petitioners in the case filed a review petition, seeking only that Paragraph 17(iii) be modified, while objecting to the tribal bodies’ right to file an appeal. 

Paragraph deleted

The appeal filed by the tribal bodies remains pending before a Bench headed by Chief Justice Siddharth Mridul, and is set to come up for a hearing on Thursday. The review petition of the Meitei petitioners was, in the meantime, heard and decided by a Bench of Justice Golmei Gaiphulshillu, which dismissed the tribal bodies’ application to be impleaded in the case and delivered its order on Wednesday.

“I am satisfied and of the view that the direction given at Paragraph No. 17(iii) of the Hon’ble Single Judge dated 27.03.2023… needs to be reviewed, as the direction… is against the observation made in the Constitution Bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the court noted.

While the Meitei petitioners had called for a change in the language, allowing for the State government to exercise its discretion, the court decided to delete the said paragraph altogether.

‘Bid to derail appeal process’

Advocate Colin Gonsalves, who has been arguing for tribal bodies in these cases, told The Hindu, “This makes no difference. The rest of the March 27 order remains. So even with the deletion, the effect of the order is the same: the State government is being directed to reply to the Centre on inclusion in the ST list. Our appeal challenges the entirety of this.”

While Paragraph 17(iii) was removed on Wednesday, the previous paragraph of the March 2023 order had also directed the Manipur government to “submit the recommendation in reply” to the Union government. 

The tribal bodies have argued that the Meitei petitioners, in this case, members of the Meitei Tribes Union, had deliberately filed their review petition with the intent to derail the appeal process and have their way with a “lesser but similar in effect” order. They argued that even though one part had been deleted, the other part, which has the same effect, remains. 

‘Sabotaging tribal appeal’

Throughout the review proceedings, neither the Manipur government nor the Union government filed any counter-affidavit, with the High Court recording that “they have nothing to say as they have not received any instructions from their concerned authority”.

In the hearings in the appeal case filed by the tribal bodies, Mr. Gonsalves has been arguing that the Meitei petitioners were sabotaging their efforts. “On the one hand, we are not allowed to join the review matter. Our appeal to that remains pending. On the other hand, the appeal matter is being delayed by seeking adjournments,” he said.

Meanwhile, members of the All Manipur Bar Association and Manipur High Court staged a day-long sit-in protest in Imphal on Wednesday. Their protest was against the unauthorised entry of the Rapid Action Force in response to an agitation by women activists inside the Cheirap court complex in Imphal on Tuesday. The women were demanding the unconditional release of six people arrested for looting weapons from an India Reserve Battalion armoury in Imphal East on February 13.

Conflict trigger

The March 2023 order of the Manipur High Court’s Single Judge Bench of then-Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan had caused widespread unrest and protests from all tribal communities in Manipur the moment it was made public in April. Within weeks, the agitation spilled over into violence in the form of the ongoing ethnic conflict. 

This conflict between the Scheduled Tribe hills-based Kuki-Zomi people and the dominant Valley-based Meitei people has gone on since May 3, 2023, and has resulted in the deaths of 200 people so far, injuring thousands of others and internally displacing tens of thousands.