Last Update: January 20, 2023, 19:54 IST
Guwahati [Gauhati]India
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. (File photo: PTI)
The chief minister is waiting for peace talks to begin and is expecting the ULFA-I issue to end within the next three years, ending more than four decades of insurgency in the state.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said he wanted to resolve the issue with the Paresh Baruah-led United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent (ULFA-I) within his tenure. After several meetings in Delhi with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and Intelligence Bureau Director Tapan Kumar Deka, the CM said he is in touch with the ULFA-I leadership.
Talking to reporters at Assam Bhawan in New Delhi, Sarma said, “Our efforts are on to bring ULFA-I to the discussion table. We all know the problems with ULFA-I and I have told this to the people of Assam. Despite this, we are in constant touch with ULFA-I indirectly.
The chief minister is waiting for peace talks to begin and hopes to end the ULFA-I issue within the next three years, ending more than four decades of insurgency in the state.
Meanwhile, BJP MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa appealed to ULFA-I chief Paresh Baruah to engage in peace talks with the government. “People now want Paresh Baruah to come forward for talks. Paresh Baruah’s idea of a separate state is baseless now. Now people don’t even want closure.”
Opposition parties all support the Chief Minister’s initiative to bring Baruah to the negotiating table India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) MLA Rafiqul Islam said, “The path of violence does not have public support these days. Paresh Baruah should come forward and sit at the negotiating table with the government.”
On 1 January, while interacting with senior journalists from Assam, Sarma had said that “only the people of Assam can convince Paresh Baruah to drop his demand for sovereignty and hold talks.”
He had said that the state government was ready for talks with ULFA-I provided Barua stopped insisting on the issue of Assam’s sovereignty as a precondition.
“He (Paresh Baruah) says he cannot go back on the promise of sovereignty as that would be seen as a betrayal of 10,000 Assamese people who were killed in militancy-related incidents. And I cannot discuss the sovereignty of Assam because I have taken the oath of office in the name of the Constitution.
The CM said that if the people of Assam assure the ULFA-I chief that he will not be treated as a betrayer of the cause for which the organization was formed in 1979, there could be a way out of the impasse.
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