It should have been clear from the beginning that assembly election in Nagaland would be held on schedule by February end or first week of March 2023 in order to constitute the next 14th Nagaland Legislative Assembly before the term of the present 13th NLA ends on March 12,2023. The same kind of mindset had led to an erroneous conclusion in 1998 that the assembly election should be deferred or postponed in order to facilitate solution. There was nothing then and not even any information in the public domain about the contents of the negotiations, the progress and if there was broad based agreement. Then Congress chief minister S.C.Jamir withstood the pressure from various lobbies to not participate in election so as to \u2018give peace a chance\u2019 through the objective of \u2018Solution Not Election\u2019 ( a phrase coined by Nagaland Post). Jamir\u2019s stand against deferment of election was there was no time frame as to when solution would be secured and for which the constitutional process cannot be held at bay indefinitely. In 2003 the realignment that resulted in formation of a newly formed regional party Nagaland People\u2019s Front(later an inclusive Naga People\u2019s Front) and with it a different political dynamic against an anti-Congress exclusiveness that had good backing from the BJP- led NDA government at the Centre. So from 2003 ,2008 and 2013 there was no demand for postponement or deferment of polls even though negotiations had progressed much and by 2013 when negotiations had reached a conclusive stage. The year 2018 was a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu of 1998 when various CSOs from Nagaland had drummed up the resolution to not participate in the assembly election and demanded that solution be declared and secured since all official talks had ended and what was needed was only to ink the final draft for the agreement. However, the BJP which backed the 1998 call, used a modified slogan to enable it to participate in the election with the slogan \u2018Election for Solution.\u2019 The slogan effectively means that after election, solution will be achieved. That won the day but even after the end of the five-year term, solution continues to remain in the twilight zone. The desire for solution is genuine since people expect it will close the chapter of a movement that has brought more suffering on the people for a goal that seems to be fading farther due to divisions. The insistence for deferment of polls in order to secure early solution and if not then to impose President\u2019s Rule \u2013have been raised in public domain. The fact is that election is mandate by the constitutional and has to be conducted. President\u2019s Rule under Article 356 can only be imposed under various conditions. If elections are to be postponed for unavoidable reasons then there has to be a solution that has been achieved. In this case, Naga solution has not been finalised due to demand for flag and constitution to be part of the solution which the government of India has clearly rejected. Thus, it is ironic that when the fruit for solution has ripened the government of India appears to be afflicted with indecision despite several assurances by the prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It should have been clear from the beginning that assembly election in Nagaland would be held on schedule by February end or first week of March 2023 in order to constitute the next 14th Nagaland Legislative Assembly before the term of the present 13th NLA ends on March 12,2023. The same kind of mindset had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}