Guwahati, May 10: Newly elected Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday appealed to the insurgent outfit of Assam particularly ULFA (I) led by Paresh Barua to come forward for talks.
“I urge ULFA(I) commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah to abjure violence and come to the discussion table. Both the parties will have to come forward for peace talks,” said Sarma.
Ulfa (I) formed in 1979 with the aim of creating a sovereign Assam is the biggest militant outfit in Assam, seeking to establish an independent state.
Banned by the Indian government in 1990 citing terrorist threat, the organisation had clearly marked its ‘military’ and ‘political’ wings, with Paresh Baruah heading the former as ‘commander-in-chief’.
A faction led by former ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa joined the peace process in 2011, but Baruah who renamed his faction as ULFA (Independent) has rebuffed all offers of talks to date.
Last month, the banned outfit had abducted three employees of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) from its Lakwa oil rig in the Sivasagar district along the Assam-Nagaland border.
Police have arrested over a dozen persons in connection with the Sivasagar incident, including an Assam Police constable who was among the five persons who abducted the ONGC employees.
The state government, as well as the Indian Army’s military intelligence wing, continues to meet the insurgency with force, and significant progress was claimed to have been made with the surrender of the outfit’s deputy commander-in-chief (C-in-C) Drishti Rajkhowa in Meghalaya last year.
