The All Tribal Rights’ Protection Forum Manipur (ATRPFM) has appealed to the President of India to intervene for conducting the delimitation exercise in accordance with rules and laws in public interest and for maintaining equilibrium between different communities in the state, failing which acute agitations will be taken up with a demand for a separate hill state.
A statement addressed to the President, signed by president Joseph Rongmei stated that there are no further disputes on the final population of 2001 census as the defects and the discrepancies have been rectified.
The state government and ‘All Political Party’ under the chairmanship of O Ibobi Singh are still making claims that there are discrepancies and defects in the Census 2001 which are totally baseless, it said.
Up until 1976, after every Indian census the seats of Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State Assemblies were redistributed respectively throughout the country so as to have equal population representation from each seat, it said. The apportionment was done thrice as per 1951, 1961 and 1971, it added.
However, the matter was discussed and decided to move to the government of India and delimitation commission for maintaining status quo of the existing assembly constituencies in a cabinet meeting held on September 21, 2005 under O Ibobi Singh, the former chief minister of Manipur only on communal ground, it alleged. Again October 22, 2005, the matter was discussed in the proceeding of all political parties and resolved either to maintain the status quo to carry out the delimitation exercise district wise by adjusting within the district itself without affecting the number of existing constituencies, it said.
“The whole proceedings of the cabinet and its decision and allegations are done with communal agenda which are illegal and deprived of the rights of the tribal hill people for equal representation in the parliamentary and assembly constituencies in respect of the state of Manipur under communal and dominated majority community,” it added.
