COCOMI has issued a hard-hitting rebuttal to the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and the United People’s Front (UPF), accusing them of “twisting history” after the groups reportedly told Home Ministry officials in New Delhi that Manipur’s hill areas were never under the rule of the Manipur kings.
In a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister, COCOMI said the claim was a calculated attempt to legitimise the demand for a separate Kuki administrative unit.
The organisation asserted that historical records, the Manipur State Darbar Rules of 1907, and post-Independence judicial rulings (even as late as 1979) clearly established that the entire territory of Manipur, including the hills, was always under continuous state jurisdiction.
COCOMI stated that the Kuki presence in Manipur was a colonial creation, engineered by British Political Agent William McCulloch in the mid-1800s to secure frontier zones, and that the term “Kuki” itself was a British label, not an indigenous identity.
It further argued that courts had only ever recognised customary usage rights for hill villages, not ownership of land or forests.
Urging the Centre to dismiss the “ahistorical narrative,” COCOMI warned that entertaining such claims would dangerously compromise Manipur’s territorial integrity and undermine long-standing legal and administrative continuity.
