ST status for Meiteis was considered and rejected in 1982 and 2001, government records show

Records show Meitei community rejected twice for ST status in last 4 decades. Union and Manipur governments not made this info public. Protest rally against HC order triggered violence between Meitei and ST Kuki-Zo communities. Office of RGI and Manipur govt. found Meiteis don't possess tribal characteristics. Union government didn't submit records before HC. Criteria for defining STs set in 1965 by Lokur Committee. Modi govt. floated proposal to change criteria in 2014, but put on hold in 2022.

A proposal on the inclusion of the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes list has been examined and rejected twice over the last four decades, according to documents seen by The Hindu: once, in 1982, by the Office of the Registrar General of India; and again, in 2001, by the Government of Manipur. The Union and Manipur governments have not made this information public during the ongoing ethnic conflict in the State, nor presented these records in the Manipur High Court court case on the Meitei petition for inclusion.

In fact, officials of the Tribal Affairs Ministry fished out these historical documents in late April this year, just days after the controversial Manipur High Court order to send a recommendation on ST status to Meiteis was made public. Officials in Delhi were recording these findings in files related to the Meiteis’ demand, even as the Hill Areas Committee in Manipur passed a resolution against the order amidst growing opposition by tribal groups. 

On May 3, a protest rally against the HC order triggered the eruption of violence between the valley-based Meitei community and the hills-based Scheduled Tribe Kuki-Zo communities, with nearly 180 people killed in the conflict over the next five months.

The records, accessed by The Hindu under the Right to Information Act, 2005, showed that the Office of the RGI had looked into the Meiteis’ inclusion in the ST list on a request from the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1982. It found that, based on “available information”, the Meitei community “does not appear to possess tribal characteristics”, and said it was not in favour of inclusion. It noted that historically, the term had been used to describe the “non-tribal population in the Manipur valley”.

Almost 20 years later, when the erstwhile Ministry of Social Justice was revising the SC/ST lists of States and Union Territories, it had sought recommendations from the Manipur government. In response, the Tribal Development Department of Manipur on January 3, 2001, told the Centre that it agreed with the 1982 opinion of the Office of the RGI on the status of Meiteis. 

The Manipur government, then headed by Chief Minister W. Napamacha Singh, had said that the Meitei community was the “dominant group in Manipur” and need not be included in the ST list. It noted that Meitei people were Hindus and “assumed the status of Kshatriya Caste in the ladder of Hindu Castes”, adding that they had already been listed as Other Backward Classes. 

The Union government, however, did not submit any of these records before the Single-Judge Bench of Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan, which was hearing the Meiteis’ petition.