Arunachal Pradesh Students Union (AAPSU) Pleads Chief Minister Pema Khandu to Halt

OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR, : The All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union (AAPSU) has pleaded Chief Minister Pema Khandu to have parleys with the Centre and issue necessary directives for instant halt of the proposed meeting between NSCN (IM) and the union Home Ministry at Deomali in State’s Tirap district on August 9 next.

Apprehending ‘serious implication’ on the proposed meeting, the apex students’ body of the State in a memorandum to the Chief Minister yesterday urged him to immediately constitute an all-party delegation to have parleys with the Centre on the matter.

The proposed meeting would be held between Home Ministry’s Joint Secretary (NE) Satyendra Garg and NSCN (IM)’s vice chairman Gen (retd) V S Atem along with collective leadership of the outfit. “The meeting has been proposed without taking the indigenous people of the State into confidence,” the memorandum said. “It is a well enacted and premeditated attempt on their part to create confusion on the purported peace talk framework and sabotage peace in the State, when the content of the Indo-Naga peace talk framework agreement which was signed on August 3, 2015, is still shrouded in mystery and yet to be made public,” the AAPSU said.

“The AAPSU has repeatedly in the past and in the present welcomes the peace talk between the Centre and NSCN-IM, but not at the cost of territorial and administrative integrity of the State,” the memorandum said.

It added that the news emanating from unconfirmed sources to create an administrative setup encompassing on the principle ‘State within State’ ceding to the demand for Greater Nagalim in a different context by the Government of India is unacceptable to the people of the state.”

Taking advantage of the Constitutional lapse, the NSCN should stop subjugating and committing atrocities on the innocent villagers of the three districts, the AAPSU said in its memorandum.

“Since the last two decades it is an open secret that the Naga elements have committed many atrocities, violence in the three districts of the State namely, Tirap, Changlang and Longding. The Centre despite having full knowledge of the ground realities remained indifferent and maintained stoic silence and has allowed flourishing of unabated extortion and interference in the peaceful existence in the three districts,” the AAPSU stated.

The Union meanwhile, appealed to the Centre to expedite the process of deleting ‘any other Naga Tribe’ suffixed in the Schedule Tribe certificate issued to tribes such as Wancho, Nocte and Tangsa of Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts.

It said the term ‘any other Naga tribe’ was given by the British and then adopted in the Constitution without any cross-verification.