Monsoon session of Nagaland assembly to start on Aug 3

A three-day monsoon session of the Nagaland assembly is scheduled to begin from August 3, where matters related to the vexed Naga political issue will be discussed.

Assembly sources on Friday said that the Business Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Speaker Sharingain Longkumer has set the provisional programme for the session which will be conducted following Covid-19 protocols.

The monsoon session will be held in the backdrop of the recent proposal of the opposition Naga People's Front (NPF), which has 25 members in the House, to join the People's Democratic Alliance (PDA) government with a view to facilitating an early solution to the Naga peace talks.

The proposal, if accepted, will make the assembly opposition-less. The Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), the major ally of the PDA with 20 MLAs, is now waiting for a response to the proposal from the BJP, its ally, which has 12 members in the House.

Nagaland BJP president Temjen Imna Along said that the saffron party has a high command and the state unit cannot make a decision on its own on the issue.

Sources said that the eighth Session of the 13th assembly will be held between August 3 and 5 with a recess on August 4.

Besides the Question Hour, the session will take up discussion on matters of the Naga political issue and the activities carried out by the state government's Core Committee on it.

The panel was formed on June 10 with Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio as the convenor, Deputy CM Y Patton and Opposition Leader T R Zeliang as co-convenors and minister Neiba Kronu as the member secretary.

The Naga political issue or peace talks is one of the principal agendas on the election manifesto of every political party in the state in all the elections for the past several years.

A separate dialogue for a solution between the central government and Naga negotiating groups has been in progress with NSCN(IM) since 1997 and the two sides have signed a Framework Agreement in August 2015.

The talks were said to have concluded in October 2019. However, in recent times, uncertainty over some issues such as allowing the NSCN (IM) the right to tax businesses and the inability to make a headway over certain other lingering points has placed the solution process in jeopardy.

Assembly sources also said that the government has proposed to hold deliberations on how to revive the state's economy, which has been affected by the pandemic for the last one-and-a-half-year.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)