Manipur sets 1951 as the base year for an NRC it cannot run alone

Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam told the 60-member Assembly on 7 September that 1951 will be the base year if the National Register of Citizens is updated in the state. He also said the state cannot run that exercise on its own. The Centre has to approve it, and the original 1951 records are still being traced.

The statement answered a question from Opposition MLA K. Meghachandra Singh. Konthoujam pointed to three Assembly resolutions: 5 August 2022, which also created the Manipur State Population Commission; 1 March 2024; and a unanimous vote on 2 September 2026. "We need to move the Centre cautiously so that it does not fail as it did in Assam," he said. Assam's 2019 NRC list remains tied up in court and has not been published as a working roll.

The 1951 date is not an accident. Manipur abolished its permit system on 18 November 1950 through a notification by Chief Commissioner Himmat Singh. The first Census of independent India and a nationwide NRC were taken in 1951. Meitei and Naga groups treat that year as the first clean count after the old entry controls fell away. They cite the jump in recorded decadal growth from 12.80 percent in 1951 to 35.04 percent in 1961 as evidence that population rose fast once permits ended.

Those groups want the NRC finished before the next Census and before any delimitation, so that later population change does not reset assembly seats. The Centre recently put off the Census in Manipur. Kuki organisations call an NRC at this point premature. The Kuki-Zo Council has asked New Delhi to go ahead with the Census and not let what it calls politically timed demands block the count.

On a separate question from Opposition MLA Th. Lokeshwar Singh, Konthoujam gave enforcement numbers. He said 24,475 people have been detected as illegal immigrants. Of those, 14,992 have been pushed back into Myanmar through diplomatic channels. The detections cluster in three hill districts: 14,370 in Chandel, 6,545 in Kamjong and 3,560 in Tengnoupal. Verification work stopped when violence began on 3 May 2023 and has only partly resumed.

The politics of the register sit on the same fault line as the violence. Valley organisations treat an NRC with a 1951 cut-off as a way to separate citizens from later arrivals across the Myanmar border. Hill groups see a 75-year-old baseline as a tool that can mark long-settled families as doubtful, especially where village records burned or never existed on paper. Assam's experience is the warning both sides quote. A list that cannot be defended in court does not settle a dispute. It freezes it.

Konthoujam's phrasing left the hard part in New Delhi. The state can pass resolutions and hunt for 1951 bound volumes. It cannot notify an NRC, staff the hearing centres or decide what document proves presence in 1951 in a district where paper was scarce. Until the Union home ministry answers the 2 September resolution, 1951 is a political date, not an operational one.

What happens next is a file, not a count. If the Centre agrees to a Manipur NRC, the first fight will be over whether 1951 records can be found and scanned for every subdivision. If it refuses, the Assembly has already said three times what it wants. Either answer will land in a state where Census delay, delimitation and the unclosed 2023 conflict already occupy the same table.