Officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the top leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) held a meeting in Dimapur on Friday and decided to hold fresh formal talks between the government and the dominant Naga group soon, officials said.
A Nagaland government official said that MHA’s advisor, North East, A.K. Mishra on Friday held a meeting with NSCN-IM’s General Secretary and chief negotiator Thuingaleng Muivah and discussed various aspects of the Naga political issue.
“Two other senior leaders of the NSCN-IM attended the meeting. Both sides decided to hold formal talks at the earliest to take forward the long-pending Naga political issue,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Mishra, who came to Nagaland on Thursday, also held a meeting with the Working Committee of the Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) in Dimapur on the same day.
The NNPGs, an alliance of seven other Naga groups, have been in talks with the Centre and signed an “Agreed Position” in 2017.
The last formal meeting between the government and the NSCN-IM was held in October last year. The NSCN-IM recently said that if the Indians respect the history of the Nagas, Nagas would respect the history of India ten times.
Addressing the 46th raising day celebration of the NSCN-IM at the outfit’s headquarters ‘Hebron’, Vice Chairman Tongmeth Wangnao said that the Indian government gave official recognition to the rights of the Nagas on two historic occasions. He said that the first official recognition of the uniqueness of Naga history was on July 11, 2002, in an Amsterdam meeting, and was followed by the Framework Agreement of August 3, 2015, in New Delhi, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the architect of the historic agreement.
Significantly, PM Modi was accompanied by a whole host of top-level ministers like the then Home Minister Rajnath Singh, as well as National Security Advisor Ajit Doyal, the Chief of Army Staff, and other high dignitaries who matter.
The NSCN-IM leader had said that while the fate of the Naga political talks is in the hands of God, “we need to give new meaning to our divine connection under the banner of ‘Nagalim for Christ'”.
The Union government has been holding political negotiations with the NSCN-IM since the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 1997 and also inked the Framework Agreement in 2015. The government also entered into parallel negotiations with the NNPGs in 2017. They signed the Agreed Position in November 2017. The NSCN-IM has remained firm on its demand for a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas as well as integration of Naga-inhabited areas spread over four northeastern states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, besides Myanmar.
