Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Nagaland CM Chang should have known better that the local media will try and get his thoughts on the current demand of the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organization (ENPO) for a separate State called Frontier Nagaland. After all, Mr Chang represents the people of Nagaland as an MP in the Indian Parliament. If anyone should speak up on the issue, it is people like him, since, besides being the Lok Sabha MP, he is also from eastern Nagaland. Though the current MP has remained almost elusive ever since getting elected by a landslide margin, the local media felt it to be the best opportunity to try and evince a response to the ENPO demand given that the former was in Dimapur to attend a public function where the media had also been invited. As expected Mr Chang took a cautious line when he was asked to comment on the ENPO demand for a separate state. “I cannot give any opinion…” at the moment, was the MP’s guarded response. Maybe the MP must have been told by party bosses in Kohima not to speak on the matter. It is unfortunate that someone holding the position as Lok Sabha MP should remain silent over such an important issue. This is though not surprising because officially the NPF Government led by Neiphiu Rio has chosen to remain silent till now on what is a matter of grave concern for the people of Nagaland. When a section of your citizenry wants to separate from you, any right thinking person in authority should have responded by now. Hopefully, the NPF government, preferably the Chief Minister himself will also put out an official statement on the ENPO demand. The Opposition Congress has already done so. We should not keep quiet on such issue of public importance.
Coming back to the Lok Sabha MP, whatever little information he shared with the local media, the MP did meet the ENPO representatives during their visit to Delhi in December, when the latter came to submit their memorandum to the Government of India. Whether the Lok Sabha MP had kept the Chief Minister informed, if the government had known that a memorandum was being submitted to the Centre, greater effort could have been made including by the Lok Sabha MP to try and stop the ENPO from going ahead. According to the Lok Sabha MP he neither told them (ENPO) to go ahead nor did he stop them. And if the Chief Minister would have also been aware of such a plan of the ENPO, he could have made a personal appeal to the ENPO and also called for a dialogue at the highest level so that the grievances of the ENPO could have been at least listened to before going to the Central government. Whether all this was done is something that we don’t know. But things could have been handled with a little bit more effort by those at the helm of affairs in Nagaland. While we do not doubt the concern of the present government on the grievances brought out by the ENPO, nevertheless the government in power should do much more, especially after the memorandum for a separate Statehood has been submitted. As per the Lok Sabha MP from Nagaland, he has yet to see the contents of the memorandum submitted by the ENPO to the Prime Minister in December last year. “What they’ve submitted, I’ve not seen”, stated the MP to the local media last week. This is shocking and irresponsible on the part of the Lok Sabha MP not to have gone through even the basic thirteen page memorandum. There is no point glorifying what the present government has done for eastern Nagaland. The present situation demands that we address the critical issue brought out by the ENPO demand. Clearly our Lok Sabha MP and also the NPF government need to do a reality check.
