New Delhi: Twenty-nine Naga village chiefs have lodged a formal complaint with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), alleging that their signatures were forged in a rejoinder submitted to the commission, which falsely claimed that 260 tribal village chiefs in Manipur supported the establishment of a separate administration.
Expressing alarm over the purported forgery at a significant level, the Naga village chiefs, in their letter, urged the commission to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter and also requested the commission to discard the submitted rejoinder.
In the complaint, the 29 Naga village chiefs alleged that their signatures had been forged to show that all tribals want a separate administration, while it is only the Kuki tribes that have been seeking such a complex arrangement fraught with ethnic complexities.
"The rejoinder submitted to the commission on September 12, 2023, by the so-called 260 village chairmen/chiefs... is a sinister policy... in the name of tribal villages appending their copy-scanned signatures of Naga village chairmen/chiefs living in Kangpokpi, Chandel, and Churachandpur districts of Manipur," the Naga chiefs said in the letter to the commission.
"This is in order to boost up their campaign for the creation of a separate administration fancied as the 'Kuki Hills," they alleged in the letter.
"... In the light of this matter, all contents from pages 1 to 150 contained in the so-called rejoinder submitted to the commission appending a copy of scanned signatures of the original Naga settlers village chairmen/chiefs should be rejected... by the commission promptly," the 29 Naga tribal chiefs said in the letter.
Four of the 29 Naga village chiefs who wrote the letter confirmed that their signatures were forged, reports NDTV.
While the state government sources said they are aware of the matter, and are looking into it, no further details have been divulged about any possible investigation.
The Kuki tribes, predominantly residing in the hills of Manipur, have been demanding an administration separate from the state. Their efforts have intensified after the ethnic clashes that began on May 3, with valley-majority Meiteis.
Ten Kuki MLAs in the 60-member Manipur assembly and Kuki civil society groups are leading the call for a separate administration. They say that a peaceful co-existence with the Meiteis was impossible after the outbreak of ethnic violence that claimed over 180 lives and displaced thousands internally.
In a significant development, on November 15, a frontal organisation of the Kuki tribes had claimed that they were ready to establish a ‘self-governed separate administration’ in areas dominated by them, "whether the centre recognised it or not", reports NDTV.
Some Naga civil society groups in Manipur have alleged they were misled into taking part in a "tribal unity march" on May 3 - the day violence broke out between the Kuki tribes and the Meiteis.
The Nagas have stayed away from the ethnic clashes in Manipur and warned against clubbing all tribes of Manipur together in any demand placed before the Centre or the state government.
The Naga and the Kuki tribes, too, had clashed in 1993 over land issues, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives.