Last Updated: January 20, 2023, 19:54 IST
Guwahati [Gauhati]India
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. (File photo: PTI)
The Chief Minister is waiting for peace talks to start and hopes for an end to the ULFA-I issue within the next three years, which will bring to a close over four decades of insurgency in the state
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said that he wants to resolve the issue with Paresh Baruah-led United Liberation Front of Asom—Independent (ULFA-I) within his tenure. After a series of meetings with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Home Secretary Ajoy Bhalla and Intelligence Bureau Director Tapan Kumar Deka in Delhi, the CM said that he is in touch with ULFA-I leadership.
Speaking to reporters at Assam Bhawan in New Delhi, Sarma said, “Our efforts to bring ULFA-I to the discussion table are continuing. We all know the problems with ULFA-I and I have said this to the people of Assam. Despite this, we are in constant touch with ULFA-I, indirectly.”
The Chief Minister is waiting for peace talks to start and hopes for an end to the ULFA-I issue within the next three years, which will bring to a close over four decades of insurgency in the state.
Meanwhile, BJP MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa appealed to ULFA-I chief Paresh Baruah to join peace talks with the government. “People now want Paresh Baruah to come forward for talks. Paresh Baruah’s thought of a separate state is now unfounded. Now the people don’t even want a bandh,” he said.
Supporting the Chief Minister’s initiative to bring Baruah to the negotiation table, Opposition party All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) MLA Rafiqul Islam said, “path of violence is not supported by public nowadays. Paresh Baruah should come forward and sit at the negotiation table with the government.”
On 1st January, interacting with Assam’s senior journalists, Sarma had said that “only the people of Assam can convince Paresh Baruah to talk truce by giving up his demand for sovereignty.”
He had said that the State government is ready for talks with the ULFA-I, provided Baruah stops insisting on the issue of sovereignty of Assam as a pre-condition.
“He (Paresh Baruah) says he cannot go back on the promise of sovereignty as he would be seen as a betrayer of 10,000 Assamese people who died in insurgency-related incidents. And I cannot discuss sovereignty of Assam as I have taken an oath of office in the name of the Constitution,” Sarma said.
The CM said that there can be a way out of the impasse if the people of Assam reassure the ULFA-I chief that he would not be considered a betrayer of the cause for which the outfit was formed in 1979.
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