Nagaland: High Court quashes Yaongyimsen village excommunication orders

The Gauhati High Court's Kohima Bench has set aside a series of orders by which customary bodies of Yaongyimsen village in Nagaland's Mokokchung district excommunicated dozens of villagers living in Chümoukedima, ruling that traditional institutions cannot take away rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

In a judgment delivered on October 27, Justice Yarenjungla Longkumer quashed four circulars and announcements issued by the Yaongyimsen Riongsanger Putu Menden, the village's highest customary authority, and the Yaongyimsen Senso Mungdang, a citizens' forum. The court held that the orders violated Articles 14, 19 and 21, which protect equality, freedom of movement and personal liberty, The Morung Express and The Indian Express reported.

How the dispute began

According to the court record, the row started over a seemingly small question: the year in which the Chümoukedima Yaongyimsen Union was founded. One group said it was 1989; another said residents in Chümoukedima were allowed to form a separate unit only in 2001.

On March 14, 2024, the Putu Menden dissolved the existing union and asked the group backing 2001 to start a new one. The union rejected this. After a scuffle at a meeting on April 4, 2024, an FIR was filed against three of the petitioners, and that criminal case is still pending before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mokokchung. The same day, the three and their children were excommunicated from village citizenship.

In October 2024, the Senso Mungdang announced in an Ao-language newspaper that 42 people living in Chümoukedima, including 38 petitioners and their families, were excommunicated, and the Putu Menden endorsed it the next day. A December 2024 notice warned of permanent excommunication and further restrictions unless those affected returned to the village within seven days.

What the court said

The village bodies argued that they were customary institutions, not the "State", and so could not be challenged through a writ petition. The court disagreed. It said their decisions affected the petitioners' civil status as villagers, their access to public benefits and identity documents such as Scheduled Tribe and indigenous inhabitant certificates, which gave the matter a public-law character under Article 226.

Justice Longkumer noted that the restrictions also hit the petitioners' wives and children, who had nothing to do with the dispute, and that the village bodies had not shown which customary law had been broken or how the orders had restored harmony. Reasonable limits on free movement can be imposed only by the State through a valid law, the court said. It also held that Articles 29 and 371A, which protect Naga customary law, do not give customary sanctions blanket immunity from judicial review.

The judgment separately explained the difference between the Putu Menden, a traditional Ao institution that predates the 1978 Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, and the Village Council, a statutory body under that Act. It relied on earlier Kohima Bench rulings, including Mangyang Lima v. State of Nagaland (2019).

The court left the original dispute over the union's founding year to be settled by the appropriate forum.