The Schedule tribe status in India Union is decided by their nature, their places and distances from the main city of the region. Meitei the dominant community living in and around the main city of Manipur don't deserve to acquire ST status as it is against the criteria to be Scheduled Tribe. 

1. KaKa Kalelkar Backward Classes Commission report of 1956, also known as the Second Backward Classes Commission report states that the Meiteis, when given an opportunity to be ST, did not include themselves. This is a startling and undeniable fact!
2. The first Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 were notified Presidential Orders under Article 342(1) of the Constitution. These Orders were based on the list of depressed classes framed by Dr. J.H. Hutton in his Census Report 1931. The list of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the State of Manipur was first notified through the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) (Part C States) Order, 1951. The Meiteis claimed that they were left out in the ST notification under President’s Constitution (STs) Order, 1950. This was found to be not true by the KaKa Kalelkar Commission of 1956.When the first Backward Classes Commission requested a list of tribes to be included in the Scheduled Tribes (modification) list from each state and union territory, Meities did not include themselves. 
3. The Meitei were not denied or left out from the STs List as they claim – they chose not to be included. When the first BCC requested a list of tribes to be included in the Scheduled Tribes (modification) list from each state and union territory, Meities did not include themselves. 
4. when the Manipur high court ordered the Manipur government to consider the Meitei community’s inclusion in the ST list, The Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud called the high court’s direction as “completely factually wrong,” as the procedure for inclusion in the ST list is very clear in the constitution.
5. The first BCC adopted a single criterion for scheduled castes i.e., untouchability. It also stated the criteria for a tribe or group to be identified as ST as those who “live apart in the hills, and even where they live in plains, they lead a separate excluded existence and are not fully assimilated in the main body of the people. Scheduled tribes may belong to any religion. They are listed as scheduled tribes because of the kind of life led by them.”

Manipuri, the mother tongue of the Meiteis, is the official language as well as the lingua franca of Manipur. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.

The Meiteis also dominate the state legislature. In the 60-member Assembly, 40 MLAs are sent from the valley while 20 are elected from the hills. The current chief minister is a Meitei.

A long-standing civilised community, he elaborated, Meiteis didn't meet the criteria for the ST status when the ST list was drawn up by the Government of India in the 1950s.

The records, accessed by The Hindu under the Right to Information Act, 2005, showed that the Office of the RGI had looked into the Meiteis’ inclusion in the ST list on a request from the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1982. It found that, based on “available information”, the Meitei community “does not appear to possess tribal characteristics”, and said it was not in favour of inclusion. It noted that historically, the term had been used to describe the “non-tribal population in the Manipur valley”.

Almost 20 years later, when the erstwhile Ministry of Social Justice was revising the SC/ST lists of States and Union Territories, it had sought recommendations from the Manipur government. In response, the Tribal Development Department of Manipur on January 3, 2001, told the Centre that it agreed with the 1982 opinion of the Office of the RGI on the status of Meiteis. 

The Manipur government, then headed by Chief Minister W. Napamacha Singh, had said that the Meitei community was the “dominant group in Manipur” and need not be included in the ST list. It noted that Meitei people were Hindus and “assumed the status of Kshatriya Caste in the ladder of Hindu Castes”, adding that they had already been listed as Other Backward Classes. 

 The criteria followed by the Office of the RGI to decide inclusion in ST list were set in 1965 by the Lokur Committee: indications of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness. The same criteria are used to this day.

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