Amid the crucial Naga negotiations process, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio claims that Nagaland will be a very special state when the new agreement is signed between the central government and the Naga negotiating groups. Speaking to reporters in Kohima, Rio said, “Talks are on. They are the negotiating parties and I cannot say what is going to happen or what is happening. He has something to say (on this issue).”
“The signing of the Framework Agreement with the NSCN(IM) or the ‘Agreed Position’ with the NNPG (Naga National Political Groups) was meant to devise a system on how to protect the uniqueness, history, culture and tradition of the Naga people . Many more new things will be added to us and if there is an agreement we will be a very special state.”
The central government has been holding two separate talks with the Tha Muivah-led NSCN (IM) since 1997 and the NNPG (an umbrella group consisting of seven Naga insurgent groups) since 2017. The Union Government and NSCN(IM) have signed the Framework Agreement. On 3 August 2015, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the NNPG signed an ‘agreed position’ with the Center in November 2017.
The structural agreement came after a hundred rounds of talks over 18 years, with the first success in 1997, when a ceasefire agreement was sealed after decades of insurgency in the hill state of Nagaland that began in the late 1940s.
Talks between the NSCN(IM) and the Center had stalled after the talks between the NSCN(IM) and the Center came to a halt after the October 31, 2019 talks in Dimapur refused to hold discussions with the then interlocutor RN Ravi. The talks resumed after a hiatus of almost two years after the appointment of AK Mishra as the new interlocutor on September 21, 2021.
Top leadership, including NSCN(IM) chief Muivah, are camping in New Delhi for further talks with the Centre. No final solution has been achieved with the NSCN(IM) standing firm on its demand for a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas, which the Center has repeatedly rejected.
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