Manipur HC modifies its contentious order on ST status for Meiteis

Manipur High Court modifies order on Meitei inclusion in Scheduled Tribes list, sparking ethnic conflict in State.

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. 

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.

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.”