\nA statement issued by SAPO’s president, Phelukhwe Kirha and general secretary Ketsodil Neikha while replying to ‘the statement of Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh in the Manipur state assembly’, made a clarified to the Manipur CM that the Southern Angamis are the only owners of Dzukou valley and the Southern Angami people had exercised its authority as the only owner over the valley ‘for protection of the land and its resources prior to the Britishers arrival and has been in possession of the valley and its surroundings since time immemorial’. “No government has any authority or rights to execute any document or draw any boundaries for their own convenient without the consent of the owner of the land,” SAPO declared. It stated the statement claiming “nearly 70 per cent” of the valley as belonging to Manipur, was totally wrong. Even the very word “Dzukou”, the release asserted, was originally derived from ‘the Southern Angami native village dialect’ and that ‘in acknowledgement of this ownership token loyalties in kind had always been paid to Southern Angamis over the years by the neighboring villages’. SAPO stated “the so-called Manipur Nagaland inter-state imaginary political boundary line drawn by the British Imperialist”, which the SAPO asserted, was drawn by the British for their own administrative convenience and was done arbitrarily and without the consent of the Southern Angamis. “The Southern Angamis have made their stand clear that they stick to their traditional boundary and never recognized the so-called Manipur Nagaland inter-state imaginary political boundary line,”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"