The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Manipur has created another grave concern. Reports emerging from Kuki dominated areas allege that the names of Meitei voters who were driven from their villages are being classified as untraceable and considered for deletion.
The violence that began in Manipur in May 2023 did not merely destroy houses and uproot families. It fractured settlements, separated communities and forced thousands of citizens to live far from the places where their names had been registered as voters.
In Khumujamba Meitei Leikai under Churachandpur Assembly segment alone, it has been claimed that more than 180 internally displaced Meitei voters face removal from the electoral roll. These citizens did not voluntarily abandon their homes. They fled because remaining there had become dangerous during the ethnic violence. Many are still living in relief camps or temporary accommodation.
The exact number must be officially verified. But even the possibility that conflict displaced citizens could lose their voting rights because they cannot safely return to their original homes should alarm the Election Commission of India, the Manipur government and every institution committed to constitutional democracy.
A voter cannot be declared politically absent merely because violence has made the voter physically absent.
Displacement is not disappearance
The basic mistake in treating such voters as untraceable is the failure to distinguish between an ordinary change of residence and forced displacement.
A person who sells a house and permanently settles elsewhere may need to transfer electoral registration. An internally displaced person is in an entirely different position. Such a person may still regard the original village as home, retain land and property there, and intend to return when security conditions permit.
The absence of the voter from the original address is not evidence that the voter is fictitious, dead or permanently relocated. It may simply be evidence that the State has not yet made the original address safe enough for return.
Removing the name in such circumstances would turn the consequences of violence into an administrative reason for disenfranchisement. The victim would first lose the home and then lose the vote attached to that home. That cannot be accepted as a routine outcome of electoral revision.
The Chief Electoral Officer of Manipur describes the SIR as an exercise intended to produce a clean, inclusive and error free electoral roll. Official data displayed on its portal shows that enumeration forms were distributed to more than 20.93 lakh electors, while over 1.58 lakh forms were recorded as uncollectable.
In a conflict affected state, however, an uncollectable form cannot automatically become the foundation for deletion. There may be many reasons why a Booth Level Officer cannot find a voter at the registered address. In Manipur, one of the most obvious reasons is ethnic displacement.
The authorities already know where many displaced citizens are living. Their names are recorded in relief camp registers, government assistance lists and earlier electoral arrangements. To call them untraceable while they are living in officially recognised camps would be an extraordinary administrative contradiction.
The ECI has already recognised displaced voters
There is no need to invent an entirely new principle. During the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Election Commission made special arrangements to enable internally displaced persons in Manipur to vote from relief camps. More than 24,500 displaced people had reportedly been identified as eligible voters under that arrangement.
The Manipur administration also published a specific scheme providing voting facilities to internally displaced voters living in relief camps. That precedent is important.
If the Election Commission could identify displaced voters and facilitate their participation in 2024, those same citizens cannot be treated as unknown persons merely because they are absent from their original homes during the 2026 electoral revision.
The records prepared for the 2024 election should become a primary verification database for the present exercise. Relief camp registers, internally displaced person identification documents and district administration records should also be used to protect eligible voters from wrongful deletion. The burden must not be placed entirely upon traumatised families to prove repeatedly that they exist.
Many displaced people have lost documents, property records, household belongings and access to their original local authorities. Some cannot cross the informal territorial divisions created by the conflict. Requiring them to visit offices located in areas where they fear for their safety would be unreasonable and possibly dangerous.
Electoral administration must travel to the displaced citizen. The displaced citizen should not be compelled to risk life and security to reach electoral administration.
Why Meitei voters face a particular danger
The problem may not affect every displaced community in precisely the same manner.
A large number of Kuki voters displaced from valley areas may still have family, social and electoral connections in hill districts where Kuki settlements remain accessible to them. Many Meitei families displaced from Kuki dominated regions face a different difficulty. Their registered polling areas may now be places to which they cannot safely return.
This does not mean the voting rights of any community deserve greater protection than those of another. Every eligible Meitei, Kuki, Naga, Pangal and other citizen must receive equal protection.
It does mean that the ECI must recognise the unequal practical consequences created by the geography of the conflict. A procedure that appears neutral on paper can become discriminatory in practice when it ignores the circumstances under which one group was forced to leave particular settlements.
If a Booth Level Officer visits a damaged or abandoned Meitei locality in a Kuki dominated area and finds no residents, the conclusion cannot be that all registered voters have vanished. The officer must ask why the locality is empty, where its former residents are living and whether their displacement has been officially recorded.
The electoral roll should not be revised as though the events of May 2023 never happened.
What the Election Commission must do
The Election Commission should immediately order a special audit of proposed deletions from all conflict affected and abandoned localities in Manipur.
No name belonging to an identified internally displaced person should be deleted merely because the person was absent during house to house verification or because an enumeration form could not be collected.
Before deletion, the Electoral Registration Officer should be required to cross check the voter’s name against relief camp records, district administration databases, compensation lists and the displaced voter records prepared for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The ECI should also publish constituency wise information showing how many voters have been classified as absent, shifted, untraceable or proposed for deletion in conflict affected villages. Personal information need not be disclosed publicly, but aggregate figures are necessary for transparency.
Special verification teams should visit relief camps and temporary settlements. These teams must include electoral officials familiar with the displaced communities and capable of receiving claims, objections and supporting documents on the spot.
A dedicated category for conflict displaced voters should be created in the revision process. Such voters should remain linked to their original constituencies unless they voluntarily request transfer to another constituency.
Most importantly, no deletion should be finalised without individual notice, a meaningful opportunity to respond and a reasoned written order. An automated label, an unreturned form or a deserted house cannot be treated as sufficient proof that an elector has ceased to exist.
The government cannot remain a spectator
Although electoral rolls fall under the authority of the Election Commission, the state and Union governments possess much of the information required to prevent wrongful exclusion.
The government maintains relief camps, distributes assistance and records displaced families. It must share verified records with the electoral authorities through a secure and lawful mechanism.
The Manipur government should appoint nodal officers in every relief camp to help residents check their names in the draft rolls and file claims or objections. Free transportation and assistance should be provided wherever physical appearance before an electoral authority is unavoidable.
The government must also guarantee that voters and officials can safely access the relevant areas. No citizen should lose electoral registration because a security boundary, community blockade or fear of violence prevents physical verification.
Civil society organisations, local clubs and representatives of displaced villages should be permitted to submit authenticated lists of affected electors. Political parties must also scrutinise draft rolls carefully, but the responsibility cannot be shifted entirely onto political workers.
Protecting the electoral franchise is a constitutional duty of the State.
A dangerous democratic precedent
The consequences extend beyond one locality or one community. If people driven out through violence can later be erased from the electoral rolls of the places from which they were driven, displacement may begin to alter political representation permanently.
A community could lose not only property and physical presence but also its electoral voice in its ancestral settlement. Constituency demographics could change because victims were unable to return before a verification deadline.
That would allow violence to produce political rewards. No democratic system can permit force, fear or ethnic expulsion to determine who remains represented in an electoral constituency. The ECI must therefore apply a simple principle: no citizen should gain an electoral advantage from another citizen’s forced displacement, and no victim should suffer electoral punishment for fleeing violence.
The Commission’s task is undoubtedly difficult. Electoral rolls must be cleaned of duplicate entries, deceased voters and genuinely ineligible names. Accuracy is essential. But accuracy does not mean mechanical deletion. It requires investigation, context and fairness.
In Manipur, the context is impossible to ignore. Thousands remain displaced. Communities remain territorially separated. Many citizens cannot visit their former villages. Houses have been destroyed or abandoned, and normal relations between residents and local officials have not been restored. An electoral revision conducted without safeguards for these conditions will not produce a clean roll. It may produce an unjust one.
A Final Window to Restore Wrongfully Removed Names
There is still an opportunity to correct discrepancies involving Meitei voters whose names may have been removed or omitted during the revision exercise. The period for filing claims and objections runs from July 5 to August 4, 2026. Electoral authorities will examine and dispose of these claims and objections between July 5 and September 2, 2026, before the final electoral roll is published on September 6, 2026.
Affected internally displaced voters, their families, civil society organisations and representatives of displaced localities should use this window to verify the draft rolls and submit the necessary claims.
At the same time, the Election Commission and the Manipur government must organise special assistance in relief camps so that no genuine voter is excluded merely because displacement prevents physical verification at the original address.
The vote is the displaced citizen’s last secure possession
Many internally displaced families have already lost almost everything that gave stability to their lives. They have lost houses, neighbourhoods, livelihoods, schools, farms and places of worship. Some have lost relatives.
Their names on the electoral roll are not minor administrative entries. They represent continuing membership in the political community and a continuing claim to their homes, constituencies and State.
Those names must not disappear because the citizens themselves were forced to run for safety. The reported threat to more than 180 Meitei voters of Khumujamba Meitei Leikai should therefore be investigated immediately. The same scrutiny must be extended to every conflict affected locality, regardless of community.
The Election Commission should suspend all proposed deletions involving displaced voters until physical and documentary verification is completed in the camps where they presently reside. The government should provide the necessary records, personnel, security and legal assistance. Manipur’s displaced citizens must not be asked to choose between personal safety and political existence.
They were forced out of their homes by violence. The Republic must ensure that they are not now forced out of democracy by paperwork.
Naorem Mohen is the Editor of Signpost News. Explore his views and opinion on X: @laimacha.
Naorem Mohen
View More PostsNaorem Mohen is the Editor of Signpost News. Explore his views and opinion on X: @laimacha.
