NRC first, he told the students. The schools are already shut.

Count the citizen first, he told the students. Then count the house. The schools are already shut.

Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh met a student delegation at his secretariat on Thursday and said the Assembly session that opens on 2 September will take up the National Register of Citizens. The students had come from ten institutions — DM College of Science, Manipur College, CC Higher Secondary, Johnstone, Nambol, TG, Ibotonsana Girls’, Ram Lal Paul, Model and Ananda Singh — and asked him to press the Centre for an NRC before Census 2027. They also asked him to reopen the schools. Education Commissioner Ningthoujam Geoffrey and Schools Director Ng. Bhogendra Meitei sat in the room.

Singh said the government supports an NRC in Manipur. He also said the exercise has to be error-free. Those two sentences are not the same promise. An NRC that is only a slogan will not survive a court. An NRC that is error-free is a years-long filter, as Assam already taught the country. The students want the filter before the count. The census calendar does not wait for a filter. Self-enumeration for Census 2027 was listed from 17 to 31 August. House-listing is listed from 1 to 30 September. A House that “discusses” NRC on 2 September is discussing it after the first phase has already been told to start.

The schools are shut because the street arrived first. On Wednesday the Education Department, citing the law-and-order situation, ordered every school, college and university — Board, Council, CBSE, government, aided, unaided — closed from 20 to 22 August. The Campaign for Just and Fair Delimitation had just run a 48-hour valley strike for “NRC before Census and delimitation,” then called a boycott of government offices from Thursday. Effigies of the chief minister and Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam were burnt at Khurai Lamlong. Protesters said do not count anyone until internally displaced families go home. Census training in Thoubal was cancelled. The United Naga Council repeated that there should be no census and no delimitation before an NRC. Kuki organisations have publicly opposed tying the census to that condition.

This is not a quiet demographic debate. Manipur’s Assembly resolved in 2022, and again in March 2024, that an NRC should precede the census, citing illegal immigration and a feared imbalance. A State spokesperson has already said legislators will take that demand to Delhi. Ten community leaders left for the capital on Thursday to see Union ministers and the Intelligence Bureau. The chief minister has, in the same week, asked people to drop bandhs because daily-wage workers and students pay for them — and then shut the schools himself.

A census that runs while displaced families are still in relief camps will count the camp, not the village. An NRC that runs without a clean 1951 or 1961 base will repeat Assam’s wounds — genuine citizens in the foreigner queue, genuine foreigners on the roll. The students are right that a headcount is a political instrument in a State that has already split on community lines. They are also right that a closed school is not a policy. It is a failure to keep the classroom out of the blockade.

Singh has given the House a date. He has not given the students a school on Friday. Until the 2 September discussion produces an order the Centre can actually execute — postpone, or proceed with safeguards, or admit it cannot do an NRC before September — Manipur is counting slogans with the shutters down. A chief minister who puts NRC before census must also put the child back in the room. The delegation asked for both. He answered one.