Thuingaleng Muivah, general secretary of the extremist National Socialist Council of Nagalim, flew to New Delhi with his wife and seven others on a chartered flight on Monday.
The group is more familiar as the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, or NSCN (IM), which has been pursuing the Naga peace process after signing a ceasefire agreement in mid-1997.
Skips meeting
The 86-year-old is believed to have gone for treatment in New Delhi. He has been battling health issues and had skipped a scheduled meeting last week with Nagaland Governor R.N. Ravi, who is also the interlocutor of the Naga peace talks.
Mr. Muivah’s trip to New Delhi followed Mr. Ravi’s indirect barbs at the NSCN (IM) through a letter to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on June 18, in which he said “armed gangs” were running a parallel government in Nagaland. The outfit had taken offence at the statement. The NSCN (IM) had also recently criticised the Centre for an encounter in Longding district of Arunachal Pradesh on July 11 in which six of its members were killed.
Three days after that encounter, the outfit reminded New Delhi of the Bangkok Agreement of June 14, 2001 that said the NSCN (IM) and the Centre were two entities without territorial limits. It set a week’s deadline for the government to clarify if the ceasefire covers areas beyond Nagaland.
The deadline expired on Tuesday.
