By IANS
Kohima : Ahead of the March 5 assembly polls in Nagaland, the Congress has promised to push for integration of Naga areas in the northeast. But other parties in the region are opposing the idea tooth and nail.
The move has been vehemently protested not just by groups in Manipur that are wary of losing territory to Nagaland but has drawn the ire of outfits in Assam as well.
“The Congress may be trying to woo voters by promising to integrate Naga areas in the region with Nagaland state, but we won’t let this poll promise turn into reality. Not an inch of Assam territory would be parted with,” Apurba Bhattacharya, leader of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Assam’s main opposition party, said in Guwahati.
A powerful student group in Assam, the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), has also said it is dangerous that the Congress in Nagaland is pursuing the same line as a frontline militant group on the Naga integration issue.
“It is a threat to Assam. The Congress is talking in the same language as that of the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM),” AJYCP general secretary Manoj Baruah said.
In Nagaland, however, the Congress, which is pitted against its main rival, the regional Nagaland People’s Front (NPF), is hoping to capitalise on Naga sentiments on the integration issue and take the wind out of the opposition sails.
A total of 1.3 million voters are to exercise their franchise March 5 and the counting is scheduled for March 8. More than 90 percent of the state’s nearly two million people are Christians.
The Congress, which has made this promise in its election manifesto, has actually succeeded in making the subject of integration an election issue, forcing rival parties to take note.
The NPF has said the party would go beyond the integration issue and is talking of the need for a permanent solution of the Naga problem.
“We have to go beyond integration. What is needed is an acceptable solution to the Naga problem,” NPF secretary general Chubatemjen Ao said, referring to a solution to the Naga insurgency issue.
The Congress’ promise to unify the Naga areas in the region may be nothing but a poll plank, but it has triggered off a controversy because the rebel NSCN faction headed by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah has been pushing for the same demand.
The NSCN-IM’s demand for integration of Naga-inhabited areas in Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with the Naga-dominated state of Nagaland is being bitterly opposed by governments and parties outside Nagaland.
Manipur, in fact, had witnessed a mass uprising in June 2001 with protestors burning down the state assembly building and dozens of other government property after the centre announced the extension of the ceasefire with the NSCN-IM to areas outside Nagaland.
That decision was seen as the first step by New Delhi before dismembering Manipur and including the state’s Naga areas with adjoining Nagaland. The centre eventually withdrew this plan after massive street violence in capital Imphal that culminated in 18 protestors being killed in police firing in June 2001.