New Delhi: Three years after ethnic violence broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023, the state remains mired in conflict, with a new anxiety now compounding the humanitarian and political crisis. As the Election Commission of India (ECI) prepares to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Kuki, Zomi and Hmar communities are raising concerns over the risks posed by a house-to-house voter verification drive in a state where thousands have been displaced.Preparations for the exercise are well underway. The ECI will begin the third phase of SIR in Manipur from May 20, with around 2,996 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) carrying out door-to-door verification and enumeration from May 30-June 28. According to a press note issued by the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer Manipur, the draft electoral roll is scheduled to be published on July 5. Claims and objections will be addressed until September 2, following which the final roll will be released on September 6, 2026. Manipur currently has over 20.9 lakh registered voters.The exercise comes at a stressful time when a fresh wave of violence in the conflict-torn state has deepened ethnic fault lines and rattled the fragile law-and-order situation. On May 13, three tribal church leaders of the Thadou Baptist Association of India (TBAI) and the United Baptist Council (UBC), were killed in an ambush between Kotlen and Kotzim villages in Kangpokpi district while returning from a Baptist convention. The attack has been attributed to the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF)-Kamson faction, who have denied the claim.A separate attack on the same day, allegedly by an armed Kuki group, claimed the life of a Chiru Naga and critically injured two others in Noney district. As per a report by the Tribune, the killings stem from a spiral of violence spurred by a brawl at Litan Sareikhong village between Kuki and Tangkhul Naga communities three months ago.Also read: Killing of Three Tribal Church Leaders Reopens Manipur’s WoundsOn Thursday (May 14) Manipur home minister Govindas Konthoujam reported that at least 38 people from the Kuki and Naga communities were held hostage by different groups in Kangpokpi and Senapati districts. By May 16, 28 of those detained had been released, however, around 10 people remained untraceable.A verification drive in a state of displacementThe SIR exercise is expected to have widespread, politically-charged implications on the demographic and electoral landscape of Manipur, especially amid its current situation. Kuki civil society organisations have pointed to thousands of community members who remain internally displaced, many living in relief camps or outside of the state, and have lost access to their homes, official documents and local administrative infrastructure.Entire villages were upended during the conflict and more than 300 churches were destroyed, many of which served as emergency shelters for displaced families. If a displaced person is unable to verify their original address, they risk being permanently ousted from the electoral rolls. For these individuals, a house-to-house verification drive is both inconvenient and possibly catastrophic.The Manipur Tribals’ Forum Delhi (MTFD) urged that the SIR not be conducted in a manner that unintentionally legitimises the aftereffects of violence and displacement. It called for recognition of alternate documents in place of identity and address proofs lost during the conflict. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum demanded that Manipur be exempted from the exercise until a concrete mechanism is developed to protect displaced people. Former Sagolband AC MLA K. Loken said on Sunday (May 17) that conducting SIR amid Manipur’s “unstable situation” is “very unfortunate.” He further insisted on thorough training of BLOs, clear instructions from the ECI and an impartial verification process.The Supreme Court has asked ECI to include Aadhaar and voter ID cards among the admissible documents for verification – a demand echoed by Manipur’s Congress leaders who note that several tribal communities may not have the 11 documents currently specified in the list. The commission is yet to address these concerns in a substantive manner and the SIR exercise is set to proceed in the state this week.Also read: Manipur Needs No More Repression or Coercion. It Needs a Deeper UnderstandingPolitics of belongingThese concerns are exacerbated by the broader politics of contestation over indigeneity in Manipur. Kham Khan Suan Hausing, writing in the Tribune, describes the struggle over territorial control and indigeneity involving the Kuki, Meitei and Naga communities as a “competing politics of lebensraum” – a German term meaning “living space” that was radicalised by the Nazi party in 1920-30s to justify aggressive expansionism.Hausing argues that even though the Nagalim political project and Meitei politics counter each other, majoritarian Meitei and nationalist Naga groups weaponise this cycle of violence to forge an overlapping narrative “that only the Meiteis and Nagas are indigenous to Manipur, and that everyone else including the Kukis are seen as unwanted migrant ‘others’ or as ‘foreign occupiers.'”He adds that three policy instruments, the Inner Line Permit system, the demand for Scheduled Tribe status for Meiteis and the National Register for Citizens (NRC), are being deployed to institutionalise and legalise this view.Vishal Tiwari, in his report for the Frontline, documents how the Indian Forest Act of 1927 is discriminatorily invoked, along with satellite imagery, to dismiss and de-recognise long-established communities. For instance, the entire K. Songjang village was evicted on the basis of 2020 Google Maps imagery, because “it did not produce a ‘satellite footprint’ of the kind cities or towns create.”Tiwari argues that this practice ignores communal ownership of tribal land, “criminalising indigenous sovereignty as ‘encroachment’ and the appropriation of ancestral lands as ‘state property.'” Moreover, he states that the push for notifying 1961 as the base year for NRC functions as “a demographic offensive” and delegitimises residents as “illegal immigrants.”As Hausing warns, the implementation of the SIR of electoral rolls in the state “may culminate in massive disenfranchisement of internally displaced persons.” As per Tiwari’s report, more than 60,000 people remain in relief camps across the state and over 12,000 first information reports (FIRs) have been filed against “unknown miscreants.” It is into this flawed and fragmented landscape that the SIR is being introduced.