Across Nagaland, parallel authorities have been operating under the guise of political groups whether genuine or not but that is an established fact. This is felt more intensely in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland which has earned notoriety as the illegal tax capital of Nagaland since some nine political groups besides state government agencies under various departments including social organisations have reaffirmed the right to collect or levy tax from the public who are already overburdened with tax. Collection of money became the order of the day. Joining around a dozen cash collectors of around a dozen departments were nearly ten Naga groups besides those from various civil society organisation, unions and associations. All of them believed that they had the right to collect tax. This phenomenon where one truck had to pay to over two dozen agencies and organisations etc became a real menace that made check gates earn notoriety for the state. Trucks loathe crossing Dimapur check gate(s) as drivers have to pay exorbitant amounts to all the authorised, unauthorised and illegal collectors. Recently the ban imposed on sale of cigarettes in Dimapur by one political group was brought to public domain by two trade bodies. The two bodies had lamented over this and even questioned the silence of the state government on the issue. They wanted to know if the state government has decided to ban the sale and use of cigarettes because there has been no reaction even days after the news was published ? If cigarettes was sought to be banned, like alcohol, then there should be a notification issued by the government. The ban on cigarettes is also a reflection on how many parallel authorities have sprung up over the decades. Ban on items are a dime in a dozen in Dimapur in particular and in most cases, the reasons cited are not entirely justified. For instance there had been a ban on sale on imported poultry and eggs including other animals by some unions and associations. This is also a reflection of the abdication of authority by the constitutionally mandated government. There is nothing that goes untaxed not once, nor twice, nor thrice but multiple times. This would make mafia dons in other states green with envy. It may be recalled that the infamous extortion at check gates had led to a huge public uproar since everyone from political groups, state government agencies, organisations, unions were preying on every vehicle and item crossing the gates. These gates were eventually dismantled in 2019 following a hugely successful operation against taxation launched by the Public Action Committee under the Naga Council. However the collectors were back and so were the check gates. This led then Governor of Nagaland Prof. Jagdish Mukhi to prevail upon the state government to do its duty and which led to issuance of an order on May 19,2022 for closure of all check gates, except inter-state gates while those manned by state government departments will have to close down by May 31. Strangely but not surprisingly, some CSOs in Dimapur wanted a relaxation of the ban for DMC. The new government has to place this on top of its agenda if Nagaland is to progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Across Nagaland, parallel authorities have been operating under the guise of political groups whether genuine or not but that is an established fact. This is felt more intensely in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland which has earned notoriety as the illegal tax capital of Nagaland since some nine political groups besides state government agencies […]<\/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-335739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335739","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=335739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}