New Delhi: Census operations in Manipur that were set to begin on Tuesday (September 1) now stand deferred, chief minister Y. Khemchand Singh said on Monday, amid protests and calls for a National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise to be conducted first.Singh on Monday evening thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP president Nitin Nabin “for fulfilling the aspirations of the people of the state by deferring census operations in Manipur”.He expressed appreciation for civil society organisations and Manipur BJP legislators, saying that “their regular engagement with central leaders and officials has resulted in today’s decision”.In Imphal, the Manipur high court also noted that the government has decided to defer the census in the state following instructions from the registrar general and census commissioner.Now the Union government will issue a notification amending its notification dated January 7 announcing that the houselisting phase of the census will take place between April 1 and September 30, the high court cited deputy solicitor general K. Samarjit as saying. As a result the state government said it will not conduct the houselisting census starting on Tuesday.Chief Justice M. Sundar and Justice A. Guneshwar Sharma also ordered that the Manipur government defer the houselisting census in the state until the date of the next listing, i.e. October 12.With the census, ongoing in the rest of India, being conducted after a six-year delay, the deferment in Manipur will mean that the state will suffer an even larger – and even more unprecedented – gap with the 2010-11 exercise.Protests had rocked the Imphal valley in the run-up to Monday’s developments, with agitators demanding that an NRC exercise precede the census disrupting training activities and enforcing shutdowns.A delegation of civil society representatives had met Union minister Kiren Rijiju, home ministry officials and Nabin last week to press their demand that an NRC precede the census so that ‘original Indian citizens’ can be identified and in light of displacement within Manipur due to its ongoing ethnic strife.Meitei groups and a section of the Naga community are among those demanding that an NRC be conducted before the census. Many Meiteis allege that a large number of Kuki-Zo residents of the state are undocumented immigrants from Myanmar.Meanwhile, the state remains in the throes of ethnic strife, both between Kukis and Nagas since February this year and between Meiteis and Kukis since May 2023. As of April over 43,000 displaced individuals lived in relief camps, per data obtained via RTI.So far the NRC has been conducted in Assam, where a final list was published in 2019, leaving out 19 lakh of the state’s 3.1 crore people (6% of the total). But the exercise has stalled since then, with the BJP – which had expressed support for the exercise until then – refusing to accept its outcome saying it “included the names of many unwanted and unidentified persons through dubious means”.