Why does Manipur want an NRC? Who counts as Manipuri?

In Manipur, even counting people has become a political dispute. As the Centre prepares to proceed with Census 2027, Meitei, Naga and Meitei-Pangal groups are demanding that a National Register of Citizens (NRC) be updated first, arguing that population should not be officially counted before citizens can be separated from alleged illegal immigrants. The demand has triggered protests, a 48-hour shutdown and a delegation of community representatives travelling to Delhi. The Centre is now under pressure to decide whether the Census should proceed as scheduled.

But why has the order of two apparently different administrative exercises become so contentious?

Census or NRC: What is actually being disputed?

A Census is a demographic exercise — it records the population and its characteristics. An NRC, by contrast, is intended to establish who is a citizen. The groups demanding that the NRC come first therefore argue that a Census conducted without first determining citizenship could absorb undocumented migrants into the state's official population figures.

The demand is closely tied to a proposed 1951 baseline. Meitei groups have argued that people who entered Manipur after that period should be identified, particularly amid claims of increased migration from Myanmar following the 2021 military coup.

But those claims remain contested. ThePrint notes that no government survey has established the alleged demographic increase attributed to illegal immigration.

Why is Myanmar at the centre of the dispute?

Manipur shares a 398-km border with Myanmar. Since the military coup in 2021, people from Myanmar's Kuki-Chin communities have crossed into India, many because of the continuing conflict there. Their ethnic links with Manipur's Kuki-Zo population have made migration particularly contentious.

Meitei organisations argue that some of these refugees may eventually be absorbed into the local population, altering Manipur's demographic balance. Congress Inner Manipur MP Bimol Akoijam has also described illegal immigration as a concern, pointing to what he sees as differences in population growth between Manipur and Myanmar's Chin State. Naga MLA L. Dikho, part of the BJP-led state government, similarly supports an NRC before the Census, arguing that otherwise the population assessment may not be accurate.

Yet an allegation of illegal immigration is not itself proof of it. That distinction is crucial in a state where demographic claims have already become entangled with ethnic conflict.

Why does the Kuki-Zo community oppose the demand?

The Kuki-Zo Council argues almost the reverse: that an impartial Census is precisely what Manipur needs to establish demographic facts.

It says claims about Kuki-Zo population growth and migration have often circulated without credible evidence and warns that an NRC based on such allegations could become an instrument of communal propaganda or victimisation. It has also pointed to Assam's NRC, where around 19 lakh people were excluded from the final list and subsequently entered a prolonged legal and administrative process.

The 1951 cut-off creates another concern. Kuki-Zo representatives argue that many remote hill villages were inadequately documented at the time, making an old baseline potentially exclusionary.

What is at stake?

The dispute extends beyond citizenship.

The Census is expected to precede delimitation, making population figures politically consequential. Manipur's 60-member Assembly currently has 40 seats in the general category and 20 reserved for Scheduled Tribes — 10 for Kukis and 10 for Nagas. Meitei groups fear that demographic changes could affect future political representation.

There is another complication: thousands remain displaced by the ethnic violence that began in 2023. Congress MP Bimol Akoijam has questioned how a house-listing exercise can accurately capture a state where displaced people have not returned to their original homes.

That leaves Manipur with a deeply political contradiction.

One side says: establish citizenship before counting the population.

The other says: count the population impartially before making claims about who belongs.

Delhi's decision will therefore determine more than the timetable of Census 2027. In a state where migration, indigeneity, displacement and political representation have become inseparable from the ethnic conflict, the deeper question is no longer simply how Manipur will be counted.

It is who will be recognised as part of the count.