DIMAPUR: A Naga group demanding statehood for six eastern districts of Nagaland announced Tuesday that it had “temporarily” accepted Union govt’s offer to devise a mechanism for executive, legislative and financial autonomy.
The offer was made at a tripartite meeting in Delhi involving Centre, the Nagaland govt and Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation (ENPO), whose call for a boycott of Lok Sabha polls this year led to less than 1% of the electorate voting in Kiphire, Longleng, Mon, Noklak, Shamator and Tuensang districts.
The Dec 13 meeting was a follow-up to preliminary talks in Guwahati on Aug 13 at Union home minister Amit Shah’s initiative, sources said.
ENPO president Chingmak Chang and general secretary M Honang Konyak clarified that acceptance of the proposal didn’t mean giving up eastern Nagaland’s demand for “a separate state of Frontier Nagaland”. Chang said ENPO decided to settle for the proposed autonomy mechanism for now given the “difficulties” outlined by Union govt in carving a separate state out of the six districts.
The next tripartite meeting is scheduled for the second week of Jan to discuss what the Naga organisation said were “unresolved issues”.
ENPO said it was confident Amit Shah and Nagaland CM Neiphiu Rio would honour the commitments made in Mon town on Feb 20, 2023, and in Tuensang the next day on behalf of NDPP-BJP coalition.