Members of the Meitei Tribes Union have now filed a plea to defer the hearing in the appeal filed against the contentious March 27 order, which became the immediate trigger for the ethnic violence that has riven the State for over one and half months now.
Meitei Tribes Union was the organisation that had first approached the High Court and secured an order directing the State to recommend the Meiteis’ inclusion in the ST list.
After the March 27 order became public, protests by existing STs grew in the State, leading to a Tribal Solidarity March on May 3. After one of these marches in Churachandpur ended, violence broke out and spread to other parts of the state. So far, over 100 have been killed, hundreds more injured, and tens of thousands internally displaced in the violence.
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Soon after the violence began, the All Manipur Tribal Union filed an appeal against the March 27 order, which was opposed by the MTU and its representatives in court.
In the second week of June, MTU representatives filed a petition to review the March 27 order. As a result of this, the Division Bench of the High Court hearing the appeal had said last week that it would wait for an order on the review petition.
With a Bench of the Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan admitting the review petition for hearing on Monday (this week) and issuing notices to the Centre and the State government, the MTU filed an application to defer the appeal hearing — citing this development. Justice Muralidharan had also authored the contentious March 27 order.
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In the March 27 order, Justice Muralidharan had ordered the State government to reply to the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry on a request for including Meiteis on the ST list. In addition, he had also directed the state government to consider the inclusion expeditiously.
This latter part of the order has been called into review by the MTU, which has argued that they had only sought for a direction to the State to reply to the Union government and nothing more.
The review petition filed by the MTU has been listed for next hearing on July 5.
