Tongue of Slip!!
A V E
Issue 114, 2022
Established: 1995
o u t p o s t
Campus News Pg. 4-5
Pg. 5
Saturday, November 12th, 2022
Tongue Of Slip!! Pg. 6
THE FLAG, THE FIGHT -Calvin Iron, XII The NSCN–IM is all set to resume the peace dialogue with the Central government over the Framework Agreement which was signed in the year 2015. The outfit had been upset with the Centre’s interlocutor AK Mishra for omitting potentially important points that his predecessor RN Ravi had included in his formulated papers earlier. The talks had stalled after interlocutor Mishra had dropped three points that had been agreed upon between former interlocutor Ravi and the NSCN-IM, which the insurgent group had objected to. The Centre’s deadline for peace talks had expired on 31st October, 2019 without any accord being signed, following which the NSCN-IM had a falling-out with Ravi, who was replaced with Mishra as the interlocutor in January 2020. Ravi was subsequently appointed as the Tamil Nadu Governor. Among other issues, a key sticking point in the negotiations between the two sides has been an apparent impasse over the Naga flag. While the central government offered to accept the flag as a cultural symbol, the NSCN-IM said it was not “impressed” by the idea. The Naga issue, they claim, was not a cultural issue and that the Government of India should not label the Naga flag as a cultural symbol and forgo the
Naga political identity. The NSCN-IM had said earlier, maintaining that this flag was not “just a piece of cloth” but a “symbol” of the Naga people’s “pride and values”. The rebel group also squarely rejected the central government’s proposal of post-facto resolution of issues pertaining to the Naga flag and the Naga Constitution, which the former has been demanding all along following the peace agreement. On the 14th of September this year, the NSCN-IM and the NNPGs issued a joint statement; saying that the “Covenant of Recommendation” signed by late Isak Chishi Swu, late SS Khaplang, and S Singnya on June 13, 2009 would be honoured in letter and in spirit. The two bodies also urgently appealed to all individuals and organizations to refrain from all forms of rhetoric, assumptions and agendas that were divisive. Though NSCN – IM is demanding for a special status, the dialogue with the Central government failed after its demand for expansion of land by reuniting all the Naga inhabited areas of the North East India into a Greater Nagalim. Considering that all states in the North East are vehemently opposed to such a proposition, the NSCN- IM seems to have lost their plot as well as steam both within and outside the state.
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Weekly Newsletter of The Assam Valley Express