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Even as the grievances of the voters of eight
Assembly segments of Thoubal and Jiribam are
yet to be addressed, the State seems poised to
see a realignment of the 60 Assembly seats and
if things are not handled maturely then it
could get sticky. As already reported and
given wide coverage, the delimitation exercise
is to be conducted on the basis of the 2001
census and while delimitation and realignment
of Assembly seats is something which has to be
accepted under the democracy that we all live
in, it is the question of the basis under
which the delimitation exercise is to be
carried out, that has to be addressed too.
One reason why the proposed delimitation
exercise was met with stiff resistance by the
State Government and certain political
parties, was undoubtedly the abnormal jump
recorded in the decadal growth of population
of some hill districts. According to the 2001
census, Senapati district recorded a decadal
growth of 81.96 percent while Chandel showed a
growth of 72.8 percent. It is this
overwhelmingly high population growth which
the State Government and some political
parties found hard to accept and it is
precisely because of this that the State
Government sent a delegation to New Delhi
recently to urge the Chairman of the
Delimitation Commission, former Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court Kuldip Singh, to halt the
delimitation process.
As things stand today, the delimitation
exercise is poised to take off and according
to the new arrangement, Imphal East, Imphal
West and Bishnupur districts are likely to
lose one Assembly seat each while the hill
districts of Ukhrul, Senapati and Chandel
stand to gain one more seat each. As already
hinted, the three seats that are likely to go
to the hill districts will not be reserved but
left open for any bonafide citizen of Manipur
to contest the election.
In the existing arrangement, 19 of the 60
seats are reserved for the ST (Kangpokpi AC is
not a reserved seat), one for SC (Sekmai)
while the other 40 are open seats, including
Kangpokpi. This means that while any bonafide
citizen of Manipur can contest in the 40
seats, the 20 seats are reserved for ST and SC
candidates. Even with the open status clause,
the delimitation exercise will mean that three
Assembly seats will go to representatives
originally from the hills for election is not
only about reserved seats or open seats but
about vote banks and in a now ethnically
polarized Manipur, the delimitation exercise
means that we can expect to see more tribal
MLAs in the Assembly from the next election.
There should be nothing wrong with such an
arrangement but given the current situation
and the ground reality, caution should be
exercised to the maximum limit to see that the
latest development does not give rise to any
unwanted political rumblings, which will go on
to mean much more than the mere number of MLAs
or the number of ACs of the hill or valley
areas. There are mischief mongers galore
amongst our midst and each and every single
responsible member of our society should
ensure that such elements are not given any
room to sow the seeds of their agenda.
It may sound a little far fetched at the
moment, but perhaps the time has come for the
Government to formulate a policy to see how
the Assembly segments may be worked out
according to some criteria other than the
existing one such as Outer and Inner Manipur
or hill and valley. In other words, make the
electorates of some unreserved seats a mix and
equal population, both from the hill and
valley areas.
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