The Campaign for Just and Fair Delimitation (JFD) has firmly rejected the Chief Minister's suggestion that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be implemented only after the Census is conducted, calling the statement misleading and factually incorrect.
IMPHAL – The Campaign for Just and Fair Delimitation (JFD) has firmly rejected the Chief Minister's suggestion that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be implemented only after the Census is conducted, calling the statement misleading and factually incorrect.
Addressing media persons at the JFD office in Wangkhei on Sunday, convenor Jeetendra Ningomba stated that the NRC and the Census are entirely different processes governed by different legislation, administered by different departments, and serving fundamentally different purposes. "NRC and Census are not related in any subject matter," he said plainly. "The statement made by the CM has caused confusion among the people of this land."
Jeetendra explained that since Independence, India has conducted the Census every ten years beginning in 1951 — the upcoming exercise will be the eighth. The Census is a population count that includes every person residing in the country, whether citizen or foreigner. The NRC, by contrast, is the legal mechanism for determining who holds Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955. The two exercises ask different questions, serve different objectives, and must not be conflated.
He pointed to historical precedent to reinforce the argument. In 1951, the Indian government conducted the NRC simultaneously with the Census — fourteen questions were asked for the Census, eleven for the NRC — demonstrating that the two can run in parallel and that linking one to the completion of the other has no legal or administrative basis. He added that the questions used for any new NRC exercise in Manipur would need to be updated to verify the children and descendants of those present in 1951, but that this was a matter of process design, not a reason to delay the exercise.
JFD Organising Secretary Longjam Ratan echoed these concerns, stressing that the organisation's core demand is to update the NRC using 1951 as the base year — to establish how many genuine Indian citizens are currently present in Manipur — before, not after, the 2027 Census is conducted. "The words placed by the CM before the people have turned out to be very contradictory and have led in a wrong direction," he said.
Both leaders urged the state and central governments to recognise that unchecked illegal immigration into Manipur and associated security threats are not merely a local concern for the indigenous people of the state, but a direct threat to India's national security. They called on all stakeholders to stand firmly on the resolution that the NRC must be updated before the Census is conducted.
