ST status for Meiteis | Tribal body not aggrieved party, has no locus to appeal, says Manipur government

The All Manipur Tribal Union is not an aggrieved party and thus has no locus standi to file an appeal against the March 27 order of the Manipur High Court that directed the State Government to recommend the inclusion of the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes list, the Manipur Government on June 26 submitted before a Division Bench of Justices Ahanthem Bimol Singh and A. Guneshwar Sharma. 

The All Manipur Tribal Union is not an aggrieved party and thus has no locus standi to file an appeal against the March 27 order of the Manipur High Court that directed the State Government to recommend the inclusion of the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes list, the Manipur Government on June 26 submitted before a Division Bench of Justices Ahanthem Bimol Singh and A. Guneshwar Sharma. 

The Division Bench is currently hearing an appeal against the March 27 order of Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan, which became the immediate trigger for the ethnic conflict that began in the State on May 3 between the dominant Meitei community and and the tribal Kuki-Zomi community. 

On June 26, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves appeared on behalf of the AMTU and concluded arguments on the appeal. The State Government, represented by Additional Advocate-General M. Devananda, also submitted its arguments opposing the third-party appeal filed by the tribal body. 

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Mr. Devananda told The Hindu, “We submitted that they (AMTU) cannot be an aggrieved party at this stage and so they have no locus to come forward with an appeal as far as the March 27 order is concerned.”

He said the State Government sending a recommendation for inclusion or exclusion from the ST list is just the beginning of the process and so the AMTU as a third party cannot be an aggrieved party at this point. “The ultimate power to add or remove from the ST list is with Parliament and the President. That is why we have opposed this particular appeal at this stage,” he said. 

This comes after the Union government, at the outset, stated that it would not file any objection against the appeal. After his visit to the State in late May, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that the March 27 order was given in haste and had led to the violence.