Manipur: 13 Political Parties Demand Postponement of Delimitation Exercise

IMPHAL: Representatives of at least 13 political parties have come together to formally request the central government to postpone the delimitation exercise in Manipur, as directed by the Supreme Court.

Their primary concern is the presence of “errors” in the 2001 census, which they argue must be rectified before any delimitation process takes place.

In a key meeting in Imphal on Tuesday, party leaders like the National People's Party (NPP), Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)], Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], Republican Party of India (Athawale) [RPI(A)], Manipur Peoples' Party, Communist Party of India (CPI), Trinamool Congress (TMC), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) [NCP(SCP)], Shiv Sena, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Forward Bloc, and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) spoke in favor of postponing the exercise. Yet, both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decided not to go to the meeting, generating speculation regarding their position on the issue.

The Supreme Court has recently ordered the Centre to finalize the delimitation in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland within three months on the ground that there was a delay on earlier occasions despite a 2020 presidential order withdrawing the postponement of the exercise.

But opposition groups in Manipur say delimitation from the 2001 census, which they state has huge discrepancies, would result in biased and incorrect representation.

NPP state president Y Joykumar said after the meeting, "Leaders of all political parties were involved in the discussion, which was to resolve issues and decide on a collective strategy on the forthcoming delimitation process. Accordingly, it was decided that no delimitation should be carried out until the mistakes made in the 2001 census are corrected.

The parties also committed to appeal to the centre for postponement until 2026, when on the basis of a fresh Census, there could be a national delimitation exercise. "Under the present situation, it is not possible to conduct the delimitation," Joykumar stated.

While all this was going on, BJP MLA Rajkumar Imo Singh went one step ahead and directly wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah. In his letter, Singh stressed the importance of a fair and open delimitation process in Manipur. He asked the government to first finalise the process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and delete false voters from the electoral rolls before delimitation.

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