Global Naga Forum seeks Assam Chief Minister’s intervention in Indo-Naga political issue

Dimapur, June 18 (EMN): The Global Naga Forum (GNF) has requested Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is also the convener of North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), to intervene in the Indo-Naga political issue for a just resolution.

In a memorandum submitted to Sarma on June 16, the GNF reposed faith in him, saying that he “can and will” help complete the good work of Assam’s third Chief Minister Bimala P Chaliha, who did his best to help resolve the Naga problem peacefully, during the early years of post-independent India.

“Today, as Chief Minister Chaliha’s successor, you are in a similar place regarding the still unresolved Indo-Naga problem. We are therefore requesting your kind attention and earnestly seek your intervention on our behalf,” read the memorandum.

While acknowledging his kindness and statesmanship in taking time out to meet its members, the forum said it was writing to him as he is “in a key position to influence a peaceful resolution of the long-running Indo-Naga political problem”.

“After all these decades, the Naga people believe Government of India has understood the nature of the Naga cause. There’s got to be a meeting place between this understanding and the long held Naga aspiration for a just and honorable settlement. That meeting place would be the foundation for ending the conflict, because otherwise the present generation will pass on the same problem to the next generation and the next and so on,” it said.

The forum stated that Naga people were happy that Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his commitment to ending the conflict and restoring the dignity of the Naga people during the signing of the Framework Agreement in 2015, and the successive representatives of the India government too had said that “negotiating parties will hammer out an ‘inclusive and honourable’ political solution.

“For the Naga people, our stand is clear: commitment to our human dignity and rights as a people,” it said.

It went on to say that the people are expecting ‘an honourable solution based on respect for Naga historical and political rights, official recognition of Naga Flag and the Constitution, inclusive solution for all the Naga political groups and Naga areas, demilitarisation of the region, and complete autonomy in governance over all the ancestral Naga homeland’.