New Delhi: The Manipur high court has allowed tribal bodies in the state to appeal against the controversial March 27 order that granted Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to Meiteis.
The order proved to be an immediate trigger plunging the state into a nearly five-month-long ethnic violence, starting on May 3. The court had, in its order, directed the state government to recommend ST status for Meiteis.
On October 19, a division Bench of Justice Ahanthem Bimol Singh and Justice A. Guneshwar Sharma allowed tribal bodies to register their appeal, rejecting the pleas of the Manipur government and Meitei Tribes Union opposing the appeal. With the court now taking note of the grievances and arguments advanced by the tribal bodies, their appeal would be taken up for hearing in the coming days.
The controversial order was passed by previous Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan. With the Union government now notifying Justice Muralidharan’s transfer to Calcutta high court, Manipur’s new Chief Justice, Justice Siddharth Mridul, is expected to take up the appeal for the hearing.
After the March 27 order became public, tribal bodies launched protests across the state, which soon turned into a never-ending ethnic conflict with a clear division between Meiteis on the one hand and Kukis on the other. The five-month-long violence has so far claimed 180 people and displaced lakhs of people.
After the violence began on May 3, various tribal bodies, led by the All Manipur Tribal Union, moved the Manipur high court seeking leave to file a third-party appeal against the controversial order as an aggrieved party.
Finally, on October 17, the court acceded to their appeal. “Taking into consideration the nature of the arguments advanced by the learned counsel appearing for the parties which needs to be examined and decided on the basis of the materials available in the connected writ appeal and writ petition and taking into consideration the nature of the grievances raised by the applicants, we are inclined to grant leave sought by the applicants in the present application,” the court said, according to The Hindu.
Appearing for tribal bodies, advocate Colin Gonsalves had faulted the controversial order, stating that Meiteis’ claim to the ST status does not have merit and that the community has nowhere claimed to be backward, which is a prerequisite for claiming ST status. In their petition, the tribal bodies had also said that granting Meiteis’s ST status would mean snatching away the rights and benefits of existing STs.
Gonsalves had brought to the notice of the court that tribal bodies had not been given an opportunity to present their views before passing the March 27 order. Not allowing them to appeal the order would affect their rights as an aggrieved party, he said.
While the Union government had raised no objections to allowing tribal bodies to appeal the order, the Biren Singh government, however, opposed the appeal against the order. The Singh government, like the Meitei Tribes Union, had said tribal unions cannot be considered as an “aggrieved party” in the instant case.
Besides this, Meitei Tribes Union’s review petition is also pending before the high court, where tribal bodies have also been made parties.