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Onkar Singh in New Delhi
Manipur Governor Ved Marwah on Saturday said his administration would have to keep a strict vigil on the border with Nagaland to ensure that there is no spill-over of Naga insurgency into Manipur.
He was reacting to the threat held out by V S Atem, a functionary of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (I-M), that the Nagas would not abide by the cease-fire.
Atem, in a recent statement, said if the Union government does not abide by the agreement reached between the NSCN leadership and government emissary K Padmanabhiah in Bangkok on June 14, the Naga insurgents would once again go underground.
Under the Bangkok agreement, the government had agreed to extend the Naga cease-fire to all Naga inhabited areas.
On Friday, Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani announced that the government had decided to limit the scope of the Naga cease-fire to only Nagaland.
"There would be some irritants in the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. We would have to keep a strict vigil on the Manipur borders to ensure that the Naga insurgency does not spill over to our areas," Ved Marwah told rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
Asked what would be his top priority now that the Bangkok agreement, which was the cause of violent demonstrations in Manipur, has been reviewed, Marwah said he would have to ensure communal harmony amongst various ethnic groups in the state.
"It is a matter of immense satisfaction that despite the fact we witnessed violent demonstrations in the state, there was not even a single incident of communal violence. We have to ensure that the cordial relations between the Mieties, Nagas and other ethnic groups are not disturbed," he said.
The state administration is keeping its fingers crossed and hope that things will work out well.
"We would know the reaction of the people in a couple of days. I hope that markets, business establishments and government offices would start functioning from Monday. We would have to reconstruct the state assembly building which was destroyed by the demonstrators. Another major task is to get money from the Centre to pay the salaries of the state employees for the last month," he said.
He admitted that the demonstrators gave him some sleepless nights in the past one and a half months. "I am not a saint who would not be affected by these kinds of developments. I did have sleepless nights particularly when the demonstrators turned violent last week," he said.
Meanwhile, the statement of the Union home minister that the Centre is thinking of dissolving the state assembly has shocked everyone in the state. The state assembly is currently under suspended animation.
A notification to this effect is likely to be issued once the Union cabinet takes a decision in this regard.
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