If Delhi fails to heed NRC first call... Don’t legalise the illegals
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The call for a National Register of Citizens first and then to go in for the headcount is on solid ground. The rational for such a line of articulation can be seen by just taking one, long, hard look at the scenario unfolding across the length and breadth of Manipur. There is also a reason why the two groups of people, who are indigenous to the land, the Meiteis and the Nagas, have stuck to this line, for the apprehension facing everyone on the face is real, very real. It was with a reason why Delhi decided to go ahead and fence and porous Indo-Myanmar border and regulate the Free Movement Regime. A decision taken and announced sometime in the latter part of 2024 by no one less than Union Home Minister Amit Shah and in the same vein the Home Minister also went on record to state that influx from Myanmar is the root cause of the violence. This is not something whipped up by the fertile mind of The Sangai Express but which was reported far and wide by all the newspaper houses published in other parts of the country. Just a few months before Amit Shah talked about the unchecked influx from across the border as the root cause of the violence, External Affairs Minister S Jaishanker also struck the same line in pointing out that the violence in Manipur erupted due to unchecked influx of illegal immigrants. And long before Manipur erupted in violence on May 3, 2023, a certain Paolienlal Haokip had gone on record in an article in a publication of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies on May 23, 2002. In the said article Mr Haokip talked about the entry of about 20,000 Kukis into Manipur during the Burmanization programme of Ne Win in Myanmar (then Burma) in 1967. Nearly 60 years down the line and no one knows how many of the 20,000 Kukis actually went back home in Myanmar or merged with the local population. A number of the immigrants took recourse to drug smuggling to earn easy money, is the line maintained by Mr Haokip and the connect between the drug trade and large scale poppy plantation should be clear. Immigrants and drug trade can be a dangerous cocktail and Manipur stands testimony to this, best exemplified by the violence that erupted at Churachandpur on May 3, 2023 and which has now spread to Ukhrul district. Large scale immigration from across the border and this again is reflected very well in the number of MLAs elected from the hill districts. As a young Naga researcher pointed out and which has been cited many times in this column, in the 1957 Territorial Council election, out of 32 seats the Nagas won 4 seats and the Kuki and Paite community bagged one each; in the first Manipur Territorial Assembly (1962-1967), out of 10 tribal MLAs, there were 8 Naga MLAs and one Paite and one Kuki MLA. In the first Manipur Legislative Assembly (1972-1973), out of 60 MLAs, 13 were Nagas while only 6 represented the Kuki-Chins. In the second Manipur Legislative Assembly (1974-1979) Naga representation declined while the number of Kuki-Chin MLAs increased to 8 and the same trend continued in the third Assembly (1980-1985), wherein the number of Naga MLAs decreased to 10 and the Kuki-Chin MLAs rose to 9.
Take the incursion from across the border, the admission of the Union Home Minister and the External Affairs Minister, the increase in the number of Kuki villages which prompted the BJP led Government in Imphal to notify that a village lesser than a number of fixed households would not be entitled to any Government scheme, take the drug trade and the burgeoning poppy plantation and the rationality in the call to first conduct the NRC and weed out the illegals before the census is held, makes solid sense. It would defeat logic and the purpose of deciding to fence the Indo-Myanmar border and put in more strictures in the FMR, if the illegals are to be given the opportunity to be included in the census as citizens of the land. A call which Delhi needs to heed and lest anyone forgets, the presence of an armed group under the leadership of a man who is tagged as a former MP of Myanmar is common knowledge to everyone in Manipur. Delhi cannot sing in two tunes, that is point fingers at illegal immigrants for the violence and at the same time toy with the idea of adding them in the list of citizens via the census. This should be checked.
Take the incursion from across the border, the admission of the Union Home Minister and the External Affairs Minister, the increase in the number of Kuki villages which prompted the BJP led Government in Imphal to notify that a village lesser than a number of fixed households would not be entitled to any Government scheme, take the drug trade and the burgeoning poppy plantation and the rationality in the call to first conduct the NRC and weed out the illegals before the census is held, makes solid sense. It would defeat logic and the purpose of deciding to fence the Indo-Myanmar border and put in more strictures in the FMR, if the illegals are to be given the opportunity to be included in the census as citizens of the land. A call which Delhi needs to heed and lest anyone forgets, the presence of an armed group under the leadership of a man who is tagged as a former MP of Myanmar is common knowledge to everyone in Manipur. Delhi cannot sing in two tunes, that is point fingers at illegal immigrants for the violence and at the same time toy with the idea of adding them in the list of citizens via the census. This should be checked.