Centre Asks Manipur Government to Study Delisting Kukis and Zomis from ST List

9 Jan 2024

Context: There is a plea seeking deletion of the “Nomadic Chin-Kuki” from the list of Scheduled Tribes in Manipur.

Plea for Indigenous Primacy: Rethinking Scheduled Tribe (ST) Criteria

The plea is seeking that Indigeneity should be the principal criterion for defining Scheduled Tribes in the country, citing a Supreme Court judgment from January 2011.
The plea mentions that the “Zou” tribe were from a foreign country — Myanmar’s Chin state — that finds no mention in pre-independence India Censuses and therefore should not be in the ST list of Manipur.

Kuki and Zomi Tribes are one of the Ethnic groups from the Bangladesh region. They are mainly residents of Manipur and Mizoram in India.
They are also known as Chin or Mizo people, and they share a common ancestry and culture.
They speak various dialects of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo language family, which belong to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages.
They are related to the larger Zo people, along with other tribes such as Chin and Mizo.

Also Read: The Demand For A Kuki Homeland

Any tribe or tribal community can be included or excluded from the list only by law made by the Parliament of India.
- A notification issued under clause (1) of Article 342, specifying Scheduled Tribes, is used to amend the list.
As per the SC verdict, it is not open to State governments or courts or tribunals or any other authority to modify, amend or alter the list of Scheduled Tribes specified in the notification issued under clause (1) of Article 342
However, the center has stated that the process of inclusion or exclusion from ST list requires the proposal to originate from the concerned State government, which is then acted upon by the Parliament.
The criteria used by the government to declare communities as STs were decided upon by the Lokur Committee in 1965 and continue to be in use today.
- Criteria includes primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness.