Extending the Sixth Schedule is a parliamentary/constitutional project, not a switch to be flipped by state rhetoric. Campaign for it if you choose—but do not concede, as a negotiating tactic, that today’s safeguards are hollow. They aren’t.
By James Bornat Makhel
The claim that Manipur’s “Hill Areas” are constitutionally naked because Article 371-C doesn’t say “Scheduled Tribes” or “tribal areas” is a clever talking point—nothing more. The law, the record, and lived politics tell a very different story.
By now, you’ve likely seen the argument: because Article 371-C and the Presidential Order of 20 June 1972 use the phrase “Hill Areas” instead of “Scheduled Tribes” or “tribal areas,” Manipur’s tribes somehow stand uniquely exposed to a “hegemonic” takeover by the Meiteis; therefore, only a Sixth Schedule transplant—or something akin to Nagaland’s 371-A—can save the day. That reading is not just selective; it’s constitutionally illiterate and historically careless. It confuses drafting style with legal substance, and it risks diverting tribal energies away from the very levers that already work.
Words vs. Rights
Here’s the foundational point: the recognition of Manipur’s tribes as Scheduled Tribes doesn’t flow from Article 371-C at all; it flows from Article 342 and the Presidential Orders that notify STs state-wise. That recognition is what anchors reservations, welfare, and a range of substantive protections—full stop. Whether 371-C prefers “Hill Areas” as a term does not downgrade ST status or tribal rights.
What 371-C does add—crucially—is a governance architecture tailored to Manipur’s ethnography: a Hill Areas Committee (HAC) in the Legislative Assembly that must be consulted on all legislative matters affecting the Hill Areas. The 1972 Presidential Order operationalises this. Together with the Manipur (Hill Areas) District Councils Act, 1971, it creates a layered, consultative system that is hard to skirt in good faith. If a government tries to rush land, forest, boundary, or resource measures that touch the Hills without HAC consultation, it hands tribal litigants a ready constitutional stick.
Land is even less ambiguous. Section 158 of the Manipur Land Revenue & Land Reforms Act, 1960 restrains transfer of tribal land to non-tribals except under stringent permission regimes. No amount of rhetorical rebranding—“people of the hill areas,” “residents by occupation,” or any other semantic sleight—lets a non-ST casually pierce those statutory shields. The premise that Meiteis can simply declare themselves “hill people” and start buying up the Hills collapses on contact with the black letter of the law.
The Sixth Schedule Mirage
Let’s also retire the notion that the Sixth Schedule is a universal gold standard. It was designed for specific historical geographies with contiguous tribal districts dominated by a few large groups (think Khasi, Garo, Mizo). Manipur’s hill politics are more heterogeneous, with dense inter-tribal variation and complex customary regimes. Transplanting Sixth Schedule structures here may not automatically yield “more protection.” In states that actually have the Sixth Schedule, District/Regional Councils have often found themselves in tug-of-wars with state capitals—and “encroachment” didn’t magically vanish. Autonomy on paper is only as strong as the institutions that can wield it, and Manipur’s tribes already possess meaningful tools that have bitten when used.
Equally important: extending the Sixth Schedule is a parliamentary/constitutional project, not a switch to be flipped by state rhetoric. Campaign for it if you choose—but do not concede, as a negotiating tactic, that today’s safeguards are hollow. They aren’t.
Jurisprudence Looks at Effect, Not Labels
Indian constitutional law consistently privileges substance over form, especially for protective provisions. Courts ask: What is the design trying to do? Whom is it meant to shield? On that test, Manipur’s framework—ST recognition via Article 342, a constitutionally mandated HAC with consultative primacy, statutory district councils, and hard land-transfer brakes—clearly aims to protect customary lifeworlds, tenure, and representation in the Hills. The language “Hill Areas” is a local term of art baked into Manipur’s statehood compromises; it doesn’t make the shield porous.
History Without the Amnesia
The record from the late 1960s through statehood (1972) is clear: the Hill Areas settlement was negotiated with tribal leaders who pushed for an arrangement that locked in a legislative blocking power without severing state-level resource flows. Since then, whenever valley-centric initiatives threatened the Hills—boundary tinkering, land notifications, or attempts to extend valley statutes—the combination of HAC process, ADC politics, and tribal mobilisation has stalled, diluted, or reversed proposals. Even during periods of President’s Rule, Article 371-C does not disappear; HAC consultation remains the constitutional norm, and attempts to bypass it are legally vulnerable.
This is the part the alarmists omit: agency. The suggestion that tribal politicians are “puppets” and that tribal society is “helpless” is patronising and historically false. Manipur’s hill politics—across parties—have repeatedly extracted concessions, blocked unfriendly measures, and leveraged courts and Delhi to protect local interests. Do not let defeatist rhetoric erase that track record.
The ‘Imminent Delimitation Doom’ Line
Delimitation is being waved like a sword. But delimitation is a statutory and constitutional process conducted under central law with multi-party oversight, and seat reservations for STs are not playthings to be quietly undermined. Yes, demography matters. No, there is no secret, unilateral lever that lets any community “engineer” a redraw to dispossess the Hills. If anything, tribally coherent mobilisation at the right legal junctures has historically shaped outcomes far more than hand-wringing.
What Actually Works—Now
If the objective is to protect hill land, institutions, and futures, here’s the no-nonsense playbook:
- Enforce HAC primacy. Demand formal Cabinet/Rules of Business instructions that no Hill-touching file (land, forest, minerals, boundaries, policing of resource flows) moves without HAC consultation recorded on file. When breached, litigate that breach—swiftly.
- Make Section 158 watertight in practice. Standardise the permission protocol; publish every application, refusal, and approval weekly; notify a simple public objection mechanism; and trigger automatic review if an ST transfer to a non-ST is approved without recorded necessity.
- Revitalise the ADCs. Time-bound elections, rules on customary land/forest governance aligned with Section 158, transparent budget lines, and audit-ready minutes. Autonomy requires paperwork with teeth.
- Litigate strategically, not theatrically. Centre writs on the 371-C + 1972 Order + 1971 ADC Act + Section 158 matrix. Courts understand that bundle. Frame reliefs to quash offending notifications and to compel proper HAC process prospectively.
- If you seek Sixth Schedule, frame it as an add-on, not a surrender. Pitch it as codifying an advanced autonomy layer—while reaffirming that existing protections are operative and enforceable today. Negotiation strength rises when you already use your current tools well.
Unity Without Self-Sabotage
Unity is not a slogan; it’s a workflow. It means common litigation cells, shared research notes across tribal bodies, document repositories of HAC precedents, and dedicated media counters that explain—clearly and calmly—why each impugned notification breaches the 371-C architecture. It means refusing to launder valley-centric framings through our own discourse (e.g., that “Hill Areas” is a weak term). It isn’t.
A Final Word to the Alarmists
“Hill Areas” is not a constitutional loophole. It is a constitutional lock, forged for Manipur’s specific context. The key sits with the tribes—through HAC, ADCs, Section 158, and Article 342 recognition—if they choose to turn it. By peddling the idea that protections don’t count unless they carry the exact phrase “tribal areas,” the propagandists distract from the real task: using the powers we have, rigorously and repeatedly.
The path forward is neither panic nor passivity. It is disciplined constitutionalism: enforce HAC consultation, harden land-transfer brakes, energise district councils, litigate precisely, and—if the body politic so decides—press Parliament for additional layers like the Sixth Schedule without conceding the present. The Constitution already equips Manipur’s hill tribes with agency and remedies. The work is to wield them.