The Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has extended solidarity with the Dimapur Chamber of Commerce and Industry in its fight against the “scourge of rampant extortions and multiple taxations”. It also slammed the Nagaland Government who it claimed is “fully responsible for the unfortunate situation at hand.”

The Congress Party stated that it acknowledges the untold sufferings of the business community in Dimapur as well as in other parts of the State, as they are bled dry day in day out, financially as well as psychologically, right under the very nose of the incumbent government. At the same time it regretted the inconveniences being faced by the common people not just due to the shutter down but also “for the decades that they were forced to shoulder the bulk of the burden raised by the menace of these unabated illegal taxations.”

NPCC stated that it “holds the government of the day fully responsible for the unfortunate situation at hand and pointed out that the cancerous culture of extortion plaguing the Naga society today is neither a recent phenomenon nor a simple case of governance deficit but is an outcome of the wilful and total abdication of constitutional responsibilities by the current regime since the day it came to power some two decades ago.”

The Congress Party demanded that the State Government take “strong and concrete measures to ensure that the issue is addressed promptly, and for good”, while also imploring upon the business community “to reconsider the indefinite nature of their agitation, keeping in view the possible compounding of the hardships borne by the general populace”.