Guwahati: The main rebel groups who were involved in the talks that were in its most advanced stage, NSCN(IM), has criticized the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju by calling him “incompetent” to have any take on the future of the talks.

Mr Rijiju, aged around 46, is BJP’s old pawn for Nagaland Affairs and along with that he is the party’s election in charge for the state.

Mr Rijiju, during a press conference last Saturday, had claimed that sovereignty and “other serious issues” had been dropped from NSCN(IM)’s charter of demands. But on Monday evening, the rebel group had hit out at the minister through an official press statement where it contrasted his claims and said that such statements were not expected from Mr. Rijiju “to which he is incompetent to comment”.

NSCN (IM), the rebel group, further claimed that “repeated immature statement” of Mr Rijiju was creating a lot of confusion and as a result vitiating the environment of the negotiation.

At a time, when the talk was progressing at the highest level, NSCN(IM) said, Mr Rijiju has no right to talk over issues relating to political ignorance.

“It is demeaning of him to denigrate the Indo-Naga talk which is being held at the Prime Ministerial level. At no point of the negotiation have both the parties ignored important political issues, and the concocted statement of Mr Rijiju that, ‘NSCN has ‘dropped’ the stand of the Nagas on their sovereign right’ is a figment of his own imagination,” the NSCN(IM) statement added.

The framework agreement between the centre and NSCN(IM) for a final peace deal was also signed in August 2015 and it is considered as one of the major success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in the Northeast.

The centre managed to bring the Naga peace deal last year along with other Naga rebel groups barring the NSCN(K).

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