India, Aug. 18 -- A state government team will fly to Delhi to seek postponement of the Census in ethnic violence-hit Manipur until a National Register of Citizens (NRC) is completed, as a two-day shutdown that began on Tuesday over it paralysed most of the Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley. Campaign for Just and Fair Delimitation (JFD), a Meitei group opposing the Census until the NRC is done, called for the shutdown.

Meitei groups have been pressing for an NRC to identify undocumented migrants who settled in Manipur after 1951 from neighbouring countries and pose a threat to the state's original inhabitants. Kuki organisations have accused Meiteis of trying to label them all as undocumented immigrants. In neighbouring Assam, an NRC was up...