The Centre and Manipur are locked in a battle over the 2011 census figure of the Naga population in three subdivisions of Senapati district, following the state government’s refusal to accept the figure which it maintains was “inflated”.
As per the 2011 census, the Naga population in Paomata, Purul and Mao-Maram subdivisions has grown 170 percent since 1991. “It is claimed that the data on the Naga population in the three subdivisions is not real. Nagas allege that the state government doesn’t consider them to be Indian citizens and has therefore rejected the census data for the second time since 2001” a senior official said.
Representatives of the Naga community have sent to Home Minister SushilKumar Shinde three volumes of acknowledgement slips of the National Population Register (NPR) scheme, which aims to issue Resident Identity Cards.
The state government cancelled the census results for the regions in 2001 too, citing the same reason.
“The Home Minister had asked the Registrar General of India to send fact-finding teams to the subdivisions. They were to collect samples from all the three subdivisions and probe the state government’s allegation that the census figure was inflated,” the official added. A source said that two teams were currently visiting the area.
The first team that recently returned from the region said that the people’s grievances were genuine. “It is true that they have a high birth rate but it cannot be said that they inflated the figures. A family member who migrated to some metro city might have been shown as staying in the village. But that couldn’t be the reason to cancel the census data,” he said.