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Assam : ULFA plans backdoor talks |
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After Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s rejection of the very idea of “sovereignty” and ULFA’s retaliatory “hold-a-plebiscite” challenge, speculation is now rife about the militant group being engaged in backdoor diplomacy with Delhi.
Top ULFA leader Anup Chetia, who finished a jail term in Bangladesh last year but remains in that country, has reportedly been chosen as the militant group’s pointsman for the “diplomacy and political action” required to facilitate direct negotiations with Delhi.
Reports in the media have even suggested that Chetia called on Union Home Ministry officials in Myanmar recently. ULFA has since issued a denial, but there seems to be more to the episode than meets the eye.
“The Myanmar story is wrong, but I will tell you that something is happening and we hope that it will be for everyone’s good,” a source close to the outfit said.
On the other hand, Chief Minitser Gogoi continued to be in a combative mood vis-a-vis ULFA. Reacting to the militant group’s challenge to organise a plebiscite if it thought there was no merit in the demand for “sovereignty of Asom”, the Chief Minister asked: “They boycotted the elections but they were held; what does it prove?”
On BJP leader L.K. Advani’s statement in Parliament on March 1 day that Gogoi paid Rs 5 crore to ULFA to keep it away from the 33rd National Games, the Chief Minister said the senior BJP leader should resign if he was unable to prove the charge. “If he proves it, I will quit,” Gogoi said.
This is not the first time that ULFA has insisted on plebiscite as a means to end the debate on whether Assam needs or desires “sovereignty” at all. But when an opinion poll conducted by a pressure group, Public Works, showed that more than 95 per cent of the people in nine districts of the state did not support the campaign for sovereignty, the militant group was livid.
Terror trauma for tea gardens
Meanwhile, reports from Guwahati speak of “terror tactics” returning to haunt the tea industry, forcing estate managers and planters’ associations to say aloud that they should either be guaranteed security or allowed to “surrender” to sundry outfits.
The immediate provocation for this outburst is the kidnapping of two executives of a garden in Golaghat district.
The Assam Tea Planters’ Association and the Golaghat-based North Eastern Tea Association separately petitioned Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi for protection from extortionist outfits.
In a letter to Gogoi, the ATPA sought “strong state intervention in the form of a counter offensive to flush out the miscreants and rescue the two kidnapped personnel”.
The North Eastern Tea Association was even more forthright. “If things continue like this, companies will have no alternative but to surrender to the whims of these gangs,” it said.
Gunmen kidnapped R.K. Singh and R.P. Sharma, both senior executives of Samraipur tea estate. Police suspect the involvement of a Karbi militant group or the Adivasi National Liberation Army in the incident.
Executives of several tea gardens in Upper Assam immediately knocked on the ATPA’s door, requesting it to pressure the government into providing better security.
Tea and oil form the backbone of the state’s economy.On September 23 last year, ULFA militants shot dead a garden manager in Tinsukia district. Haren Das, manager of Hoolonghabi tea estate near Digboi, was shot from close range after being called out of his bungalow.
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