Census Cannot Determine Citizenship: Why Manipur’s NRC Debate Needs Facts, Not Fear

Manipur’s demand for an updated National Register of Citizens has reached a point where every argument is being read through the prism of ethnic conflict. The State Assembly has once again urged the Centre to update the NRC before conducting the Census. The demand has received support from Meitei organisations and sections of the Naga leadership, while the Kuki-Zo Council has described the sequencing as premature and unjustified.

In a recent interview, KZC spokesperson Ginza Vualzong raised three principal objections. He questioned the legality of an NRC conducted only in Manipur, argued that credible Census data must come first, and warned that the Assam experience showed how genuine citizens could be excluded. He also suggested that Naga support for the NRC may be driven more by political alignment with the Meiteis than by principle.

These concerns should not be dismissed. Nor should they be accepted without scrutiny. The first requirement is to separate three questions that are repeatedly mixed together: population, citizenship and indigenous identity. They overlap, but they are not the same.

A Census counts the population. An NRC seeks to identify citizens. Indigenous identity involves a deeper historical relationship with land, customary institutions and collective memory. One exercise cannot quietly substitute for another.

A Census cannot identify illegal immigrants

The central weakness in the KZC’s argument is the belief that publication of the 2027 Census will provide the evidence necessary to resolve allegations of illegal immigration. It will not.

The Census records people who are present or ordinarily residing within the country. It does not determine whether every person counted is an Indian citizen. The National Population Register also covers “usual residents,” not citizens alone, and the Government states that no documents are collected during that exercise.

There is another legal limitation. Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948 protects individual Census records from inspection and prevents their use as evidence in ordinary civil or criminal proceedings. What becomes public is aggregated demographic data, not the documentary history of each resident.

The Census may show that a village or district has grown. It cannot establish whether that growth came from births, migration from another Indian State, the return of former residents, duplicate enumeration or undocumented entry from Myanmar.

It cannot tell the Government which individual entered India, when that person arrived or under what legal authority the settlement took place.

To insist on “Census first” is therefore to ask a population count to answer a citizenship question for which it was not designed.

A State-specific NRC is not unknown to Indian law

The argument that the Constitution contains no provision for an NRC conducted exclusively in Manipur also requires closer examination.

The authority to register citizens comes from parliamentary law. Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 empowers the Central Government to compulsorily register Indian citizens and maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens.

Assam’s NRC was updated through Rule 4A and the corresponding Schedule of the Citizenship Rules, 2003. The procedure was specific to Assam and incorporated the March 24, 1971 cut-off arising from the Assam Accord.

Assam therefore establishes two points. First, an NRC can be designed for the circumstances of a particular State. Second, the State Government cannot unilaterally determine citizenship; the legal framework must come from the Centre. Manipur’s Assembly is not claiming a power reserved for the Union. It is asking the Union Government to exercise that power.

Whether the Centre should accept the demand is open to debate. But the absence of an existing Manipur-specific rule does not make the demand unconstitutional. It means that the Centre must first frame a legally sound procedure, as it did for Assam.

Nor is a Manipur exercise automatically discriminatory. Discrimination would arise if different evidentiary standards were applied to different ethnic groups. A register that examines every resident under the same law would not become anti-Kuki merely because some Kuki-Zo organisations oppose it.

Illegal immigration is not merely an allegation

The KZC has asked for credible demographic evidence of illegal immigration. Census growth rates alone would indeed be insufficient to prove it. But Manipur already possesses evidence derived from field identification.

A Cabinet subcommittee reported identifying 2,187 Myanmar nationals across 41 locations in its initial exercise. The reported distribution included 1,147 in Tengnoupal, 881 in Chandel, 154 in Churachandpur and five in Kamjong. Importantly, the subcommittee was headed by Minister Letpao Haokip and included ministers from different communities.

A later exercise detected 5,457 Myanmar nationals in Kamjong district. By May 7, 2024, biometric details of 5,173 of them had reportedly been collected.

The Manipur Assembly subsequently recorded that identification and biometric collection were under way, that those detected were being accommodated on humanitarian grounds, and that deportation was being carried out periodically with the Centre’s consent.

These figures should not be exaggerated. They do not prove that every undocumented entrant has been identified. They certainly do not make the settled Kuki population foreign. They establish a narrower fact that cannot be wished away: undocumented entry from Myanmar has occurred and has already required identification, biometric registration, detention and repatriation.

A community must not be blamed for people who cross an international border. But neither should the existence of the community be used to prevent scrutiny of later entrants who share its ethnicity.

What the Senapati figures actually tell us

Vualzong has pointed to Senapati, a Naga-dominated district, as recording the most significant population growth in the previous Census. The implication is that the NRC demand selectively associates demographic abnormalities with the Kuki population.

The first part of the observation is substantially correct. The implication is not.

Research by Ankush Agrawal and Vikas Kumar on Manipur’s Census data found that the provisional figures for 2001 showed decadal growth of 143.12 per cent in Mao-Maram, 122.64 per cent in Paomata and 168.78 per cent in Purul. Those figures were later replaced by estimates showing growth of around 39 per cent.

The researchers found no clearly published methodology explaining that adjustment. They also recorded that the enumerated figures released for 2011 again produced extraordinarily high growth rates in the same subdivisions. Their study concluded that conventional demographic factors could not adequately explain the abnormalities and that manipulation driven by political and economic considerations was a possible explanation.

The abnormalities were not confined to Kuki-inhabited areas. They appeared in Naga-dominated subdivisions and in mixed areas such as Chakpikarong. This is not an argument against verification. It is an argument for verification that does not begin with an ethnic conclusion.

If enumeration was inflated in Naga villages, it must be examined. If undocumented Myanmar nationals entered Kuki-inhabited areas, their status must be verified. If electoral rolls or residential records in the valley contain irregularities, those too must be investigated. One community’s irregularity cannot become another community’s immunity.

Why 1951 remains a defensible reference point

The proposed 1951 base year has often been presented as though it were an arbitrary date chosen to target one population. It is not arbitrary.

Manipur’s administration was taken over by the Dominion Government on October 15, 1949. The Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950. Article 5 defined citizenship at the commencement of the Constitution through domicile combined with birth, parentage or a minimum period of ordinary residence.

The old permit system regulating entry into Manipur was abolished on November 18, 1950. The first post-Constitution Census followed in 1951. The official State Census Handbook for Manipur contains population tables as well as information relating to migration and non-Indian nationals. These circumstances give 1951 a constitutional and administrative logic.

Personally, I would have no reason to fear a reference year of 1951, 1901 or even records extending beyond 1881. For a family indigenous to Manipur, earlier records should deepen its claim rather than weaken it.

But individual confidence cannot determine public policy. Colonial censuses were not citizenship registers. Enumeration in remote hill areas was uneven, village names and ethnic classifications changed, and political boundaries did not always correspond with patterns of habitation.

The Government must therefore establish whether the household-level 1951 records survive, how complete they are and which alternative documents will be accepted.

A 1951 framework should not depend upon one document alone. Pre-1951 electoral rolls, village registers, house-tax records, land records, birth and school certificates, family registers and authenticated customary records should form part of a wider evidentiary basket. The absence of one ancestral paper must not be enough to erase a genuine citizen.

Ancestral homeland and modern citizenship

The KZC’s historical argument is that the British divided an ancestral homeland, leaving related people in present-day India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. That history cannot be denied. Modern borders divided families and communities throughout the Northeast. Kuki, Naga and Meitei populations all retain historical or cultural connections that cross the India-Myanmar boundary.

There is also ample evidence of Kuki settlements in Manipur before Independence. Any claim that the entire Kuki population arrived as refugees in 1967 or 1968 is demonstrably false. But it is equally true that particular groups described in official records as Kuki refugees or repatriates entered Manipur from Burma after Independence.

Both facts can coexist. The presence of indigenous Kuki families before the border was formalised does not automatically confer Indian citizenship on every subsequent entrant of the same ethnicity. If ethnicity alone were sufficient, citizenship verification would become impossible throughout India’s borderlands.

The correct distinction is not between communities. It is between established citizens and those whose legal status remains unverified.

Assam offers a warning, not a veto

The Assam NRC caused genuine hardship. Documentary inconsistencies, marriage-related movement, spelling variations and administrative errors placed many legitimate residents under enormous pressure.

Manipur would be irresponsible to copy that process without stronger safeguards. Yet Assam’s figures require some perspective. Of 3,30,27,661 applicants, 3,11,21,004 were included in the final list and 19,06,657 were excluded at that stage. This meant that approximately 94.23 per cent were included, while 5.77 per cent were left out subject to further legal remedies.

The Union Government clarified that exclusion from the NRC did not, by itself, declare a person a foreigner. Those excluded could appeal to a Foreigners Tribunal and subsequently approach the High Court and Supreme Court. Legal aid was also promised to those who could not afford representation.

The lesson is not that citizenship verification must never occur. The lesson is that documentation rules, written reasons, legal assistance and appellate remedies must be in place before it begins. Manipur will require additional protection for internally displaced people, women whose documents changed after marriage, remote villages lacking formal records and families whose papers were destroyed during violence.

These safeguards should become a common demand of the Meitei, Naga, Kuki and every smaller community—not a reason for permanent avoidance.

The questions that still require answers

Opposition to the 1951 base year is not proof that an individual or a community is non-indigenous. To make that accusation would reproduce the collective suspicion that a fair NRC is supposed to replace.

But those opposing 1951 owe Manipur a precise alternative. Which base year would they accept? Which historical records should be recognised? Do they accept individual verification of those who entered after the military crisis in Myanmar? If their concern is wrongful exclusion, what safeguards do they propose? And if they support an NRC in principle, why should it wait for a Census that cannot determine citizenship?

The credibility of Manipur’s NRC demand will depend upon those answers. The State does not need an ethnic headcount disguised as citizenship verification. Nor does it need another Census whose disputed numbers are treated as conclusive simply because confronting the underlying question is politically uncomfortable.

It needs one rule for everyone, sufficient documentary alternatives, a humane appeal system and the courage to distinguish an indigenous citizen from a recent entrant without condemning the community to which either belongs. Facts may not remove Manipur’s fears immediately. But fear cannot be permitted to decide who is a citizen.

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