The much awaited talks between the Centre and the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is all set to begin in a little over a week, with the outfit finalising its “charter of demands” for submission before the government.
“Our charter of demands has been finalised in a joint meeting of the central executive committee and a special delegates’ session held in Nalbari yesterday. But we have decided not to make it public till we place it before the government of India,” Mithinga Daimary, central publicity secretary of the outfit, told The Indian Express on Monday.
Though he refused to divulge, it has become evidently clear that the ULFA had already given up its demand for a “sovereign state” and is now likely to demand more autonomy including J&K-type special constitutional status for Assam.
A delegation of the ULFA is going to Delhi and meeting Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on August 10, during which it will present the charter of demands to the government. It was only last week that the Union Home Ministry had sent a formal invitation to ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa for talks. This will be ULFA’s first formal “peace negotiation” with the government in its 32-year-old history.
“The charter of demands has been by and large prepared on the basis of the recommendations made by the Sanmilita Jatiya Abhibartan held last year,” Daimary said. All vital issues pertaining to Assam’s burning issues have found place in it, he indicated.
The Sanmilita Jatiya Abhibartan, headed by noted Assamese intellectual and former Gauhati University professor Hiren Gohain, had brought under its umbrella a wide range of civil society organisations, student bodies and political parties to exert pressure on New Delhi to start the peace talks.
The Abhibartan later also engaged a group of intellectuals, economists and social workers to prepare a set of recommendations which Gohain himself handed over to the ULFA leaders early this year.
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