Top Kuki Students' Body Questions Manipur Congress MP's Comments On Land, ST

A key organisation of students from the Kuki tribes has asked Manipur Congress MP Angomcha Bimol Akoijam to clarify on comments he reportedly made on issues linked to administration of Manipur's hills and valley, and other sensitive matters like the Meitei community's demand to be included under the Scheduled Tribes (ST) status.

A video on Facebook showed Akoijam questioning the rationale behind the Hill Area Committee in Manipur, and claiming Meiteis have been wrongly excluded from the ST category.

The Kuki Students' Organisation General Headquarters (KSO) in the statement on Monday said Akoijam's comments on hill areas, tribal land, forest rights and constitutional safeguards demonstrated either "a serious misunderstanding of the constitutional framework governing the state or a deliberate attempt to undermine longstanding protections" for tribal communities in the hill districts.

In a video shared by Malem Laithangbam, whose Facebook profile description showed he's the Manipur state general secretary of the Youth Congress, Akoijam made an ecological argument for the Meitei's ST demand.

"We are forest-dependent people rooted in our ecology. But the modern definition equates forests only with ST population, that if you're not ST then you have no link with forests. This is a lie," he said.

The Hill Area Committee is a structure without parallel in the rest of the country, unlike legislature councils elsewhere that safeguard ST with different power structures, the Congress MP said.

"In Manipur, we have many irrational administrative ethos right from the British time. We have to openly talk about it. Otherwise we will be in perpetual estrangement all our lives," he said.

The Hill Area Committee was created under Article 371C of the Constitution.

The KSO said such a committee exists because land is a state list subject. Without a constitutional check, the customary land ownership systems of hill tribes - collectively held for generations under tribal institutions - could be overridden by a legislative majority in which valley communities hold numerical dominance, it said.

The KSO drew comparisons with Articles 371A (Nagaland), 371G (Mizoram), 371B and 244A (Assam) - provisions that protect customary land and governance systems in other northeast states. They are part of a deliberate constitutional design recognising the distinct socio-political realities of the region, the KSO said.

The KSO demanded an immediate clarification from Akoijam and the Congress party on three specific points: their position on constitutional safeguards for hill areas; the customary land ownership systems of tribal communities, and the implications of extending ST status to communities outside Manipur's currently recognised tribal groups.

The Meitei community's ST demand and what it would mean for land rights in the hills, apart from influx of illegal immigrants and the state government's drives against illegal opium poppy plantations were often cited as the triggers for the ethnic violence that began in May 2023.

Manipur had been under President's Rule for nearly a year from February 2025, before a state government became functional again last month.