Tribe names in ST certificates of some Govt staff don't exist in official list: RTI AKT conundrum takes new turn

Imphal/Delhi, Dec 24
The Scheduled Tribes (ST) certificates of some employees in Manipur Government Departments have names of tribes that do not exist in the State's official list of ST cleared by Parliament, according to information obtained via the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The RTI queries went to at least over two dozen Government departments, out of which 13 responded so far.
One department started an internal investigation to filter invalid ST certificates after finding some employees whose ST certificates mentioned tribes that are not in the officially recognised and Parliament-approved list of tribes in Manipur.
Manipur's ST list has 34 recognised tribes, including 'Any Kuki Tribes' which appears as a single, distinct entry. The last tribe to be added to the list was 'Mate' in 2012.
'No Record Of Information'
The first RTI application with four queries on issuing and verifying ST certificates in Manipur, filed on April 11, 2025, received a common response from the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (Personnel Division) on May 5, 2025: "Department of Personnel has no record of the information as appointments are done by the respective departments."
The response led to the filing of an appeal on May 30, 2025 alleging "negligent and evasive response". It said the "claim that no records exist is unjustified" because the Department of Personnel, under the Rules of Allocation of Business framed under Article 166 of the Constitution, is the nodal authority for service matters including service records, appointments, promotions, and grievances of State and Central civil service officers and all employees of the Manipur Government.
Subsequently, the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (Personnel Division) on June 24, 2025 sent a letter to the administrative secretaries of all departments - over 40 of them - asking them to respond to the RTI queries which included a request for information about the number of Manipur Government employees from 'Any Kuki Tribes' and 'Thadou' communities, and another request seeking information on the process of issuing and verifying ST certificates in the state.
"I am directed to enclose herewith the RTI application… which is self-explanatory and to transfer herewith the RTI applications under Section 6(3) of the RTI Act, 2005 for furnishing the desired information in the application in respect of your department, to the RTI applicant directly," the Personnel Department said in its letter to all Government Departments in Manipur.
Section 6(3) of the RTI Act 2005 makes it a must for an officer to transfer the whole or part of an application to the correct department if the information sought is available with that department. This should be done within five days from the date the application came to prevent applicants from being tossed around.
The 13 departments that have so far replied with the data sought in the RTI queries are: Manipur State Power Distribution Co Ltd (MSPDCL) - Ukhrul, Ayush, Consumer Affairs Food and Public Distribution (CAF and PD), Water Resources, Finance, Fisheries, Manipur State Power Co Ltd (MSPCL), Transport, Handloom and Textile, Agriculture, Family Welfare; Municipal Administration, Housing and Urban Development (MAHUD), and Horticulture.
What Departments Said
The Water Resources Department on August 18, 2025 said it recruited five employees from 'Any Kuki Tribes' (AKT) community since 2003, the year AKT was re-inserted in Manipur's ST list after it was removed by Parliament in 1956. Four out of the five AKT members had their father's ST certificate recorded as Thadou tribe, while the fifth one held ST certificate of the Vaiphei tribe before becoming AKT. The department said it has appointed 15 employees from the Thadou tribe since 2003.
However, the Tribal Affairs and Hills Department in its reply on June 11, 2025 to a separate RTI query said: "There is no prescribed procedure for changing a Scheduled Tribe certificate from one tribe to another for an individual belonging to the Scheduled Tribes in respect of the State of Manipur."
This particular query sought the procedure for changing tribe certificates from one tribe to another in Manipur, along with copies of rules and official verification process since many AKT employees held ST certificates of other tribes before they became AKT.
The Consumer Affairs Food and Public Distribution (CAF and PD) Department in its reply on August 18, 2025 said it appointed 10 employees belonging to the "Kuki tribe" since 2003. It declined to specify the name of the tribes and whether it checked their ST certificates for errors at the time of their appointment, saying, "Differentiating the categories of Scheduled Tribe is not within the purview of this department."
In the Horticulture and Soil Conservation Department, the ST certificates of two employees showed one as from the "Thadou-Kuki" tribe (appointed in April 2015) and the other from the "Kuki" tribe (appointed in May 2016).
However, there is no entry for a tribe called "Thadou-Kuki" and "Kuki" in Manipur's ST list.
The list of 34 recognised tribes has Thadou and 'Any Kuki Tribes'.
The internal investigation by some departments is checking whether the appointments violate Article 16(4) of the Constitution, which reserves posts exclusively for ST communities notified under Article 342, which provides that only those tribes specifically notified by the President and amended by Parliament are legally recognised as ST.
The Supreme Court has said several times that if a caste or a tribe certificate is found invalid, the appointment also becomes invalid and the employee can be fired. The Court rulings are from Kumari Madhuri Patil vs Additional Commissioner (1994), State of Maharashtra vs Milind (2000), R Vishwanatha Pillai vs State of Kerala (2004), Bank of India vs Avinash D Mandivikar, (2005), and Director of Tribal Welfare vs Laveti Giri (1995).
The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) said it does not check the names of tribes, but makes appointments under the category ST.
"All appointments of Government employees in the department under 'Scheduled Tribe category' are done without making any distinction among the tribes," the PHED said in its reply on July 21, 2025.
The Manipur Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board has an employee whose ST certificate mentioned the person as belonging to "Any Kuki" - which does not exist in the official list of 34 tribes. The one in the ST list is called 'Any Kuki Tribes'.
An ST certificate that does not have the exact, formal name of the tribe as it is defined in the list approved by Parliament can be considered invalid, as per the Supreme Court rulings mentioned above.
Otherwise, it's a situation where anything goes as far as verification of ST certificates is concerned.
Whether there has been a procedural fraud, or a genuine mistake due to carelessness by the ST certificate-issuing officer without any fault of the applicant is for the authorities to investigate.
Other tribe names that have been used in ST certificates but don't exist in the official ST list include 'Khongsai-Kuki' and just the single word, 'Kuki'.
Any Kuki Tribes In Brief
In 1956, Parliament removed the 'Any Kuki Tribes' category from Manipur's list and cleared the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act.
In 2002, or over four decades later, the then Manipur Congress Government's request to the Central Government to bring back 'Any Kuki Tribes' category in the ST list sailed through Parliament, and 'Any Kuki Tribes' re-entered the border State's ST list a year later.
The then Manipur Cabinet on October 19, 2018 approved the deletion of the nomenclature 'Any Kuki Tribes' from the State's ST list, documents from a previous RTI query filed with the Tribal Affairs Ministry showed.
The State Government on February 8, 2023 sent a proposal to the Ministry seeking removal of 'Any Kuki Tribes' from the ST list. It sent a detailed proposal a year later, on July 25, 2024, after answering some queries from the Tribal Affairs Ministry.
In the letter to the Tribal Affairs Ministry, the Manipur Government alleged that the then State Government recommended the Central Government to bring back 'Any Kuki Tribes' in Manipur's ST list "for political reasons".
"After 47 years... the then State Government of Manipur had again recommended inserting the name of the broad tribal group namely 'Any Kuki Tribe' in the lists of ST... accordingly 'Any Kuki Tribe' was again restored in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 2002 for political reasons," the Manipur Government said in the letter to the Tribal Affairs Ministry. Manipur had a Congress Government at that time, headed by former Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh.
Any Kuki Tribes' as mentioned in Assam's ST list is different from how it is mentioned in Manipur's list. In Assam, all the sub-tribes are listed under one heading called 'Any Kuki Tribes'. The ST certificate is issued only in the name of any of the sub-tribes and not 'Any Kuki Tribes', which is an umbrella term.
In Manipur, 'Any Kuki Tribes' is mentioned as a separate, distinct tribe like Thadou, and the ST certificate is also issued under 'Any Kuki Tribes'.
NDTV