The Working Committee of Naga National Political Groups (WC, NNPGs) has urged that leaders of Eastern Nagaland People’s Organization must desist from making any arrangement that may undermine the Naga political aspiration. It claimed that two points, in particular, included in the ENPO’s proposal submitted to the Government of India on the Frontier Naga Territory are “antithetical to the Indo-Naga political aspiration” and stated that Nagas in general must have clarity on this issue before it is too late.
The two points mentioned in the press release by the Media Cell, WC, NNPGs, which it said “will invite serious repercussion”, are:
- The present National Workers from ENPO areas are all misguided and anti-social elements and when ENPO issue is resolved with Gol, all of them will be made to surrender along with arms. The leaders will be provided with one licensed arms each.
- After ENPO/Gol agreement, all ENPO areas along Myanmar border will be fenced and sealed in order to prevent insurgents, drugs, arms smugglers from indulging in cross border illegal activities.”
The committee questioned how Nagas can wall off “blood brothers and sisters living across arbitrarily demarcated boundary in Myanmar?” It stated that the disintegration of Nagaland into ENPO area was a “ploy to further dismember Naga families” while the “Indo-Naga issue is a political and historical issue inclusive of Nagas in Nagaland, Naga people and land in Manipur, Naga people and land in Assam, Naga people and land in Arunachal Pradesh and Naga people and land in Myanmar.”
The committee acknowledged that the ENPO demands were pragmatic and consistent since the region had been neglected over the decades by the state government but accused ENPO and GoI of intending to devalue the negotiated “Agreed Position” between GoI and WC, NNPGs. It added that the Gol-ENPO talk was primarily to relook, fix and compensate the economic deprivation of six Naga tribes of ENPO by Nagaland state government which the resolution of the Indo-Naga political can adequately address.
It therefore asserted that the Indo-Naga political agreement must be given the priority. WC, NNPGs also conveyed that the state government should not use the ENPO issue “to divert attention from the impending Indo-Naga solution.” There should be no strings attached as far as Indo-Naga political issue and ENPO demands are concerned, it stated.
