Politics / Northeast

GUWAHATI, June 3 ? Frequent agitational programmes like bandhs, rail roko agitations, picketing, dharna, obstructions etc in the last few years not only resulted in financial loss to the Railways but also affected the movement of people and goods to this backward region of the country.

According to records available with the NF Railway, the areas under the juridiction of this Railway witnessed 132 bandhs, 24 Rail Roko programmes, one picketing, 17 obstructions, 15 dharnas on the tracks etc in the year 2000. In the year 2001, the area witnessed 112 bandhs, 28 Rail Roko agitations, one...

DHAKA, June 3 ? Bangladesh has said that it has found no camps of Indian insurgents on its soil as claimed by India, reports PTI. ?India?s list of Indian insurgency camps in Bangladesh has been investigated but nothing has been found,? Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed Khan has said.

Rejecting the suggestion that there is no forward movement in Indo-Bangladesh relations, Khan said there are no contentious issues between the two nations, adding ?what the two have are irritants.? He described the recent series of interactions between political leaders of the two sides as ?positive and...

New Delhi, June 2: Bangladesh?s history may have taken a slightly different turn had the Mizo National Front (MNF) carried out its decision to execute former President and dictator Zia-ur Rahman.

The Mizo National Front (MNF) was in hiding in then East Pakistan and was mulling over the pros and cons of the war of liberation as it would have entailed installation of a pro-India government and elimination of all camps. The MNF was allowed to set up camps in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of East Pakistan with the active support of Islamabad. The outfit?s sympathies lay with West Pakistan.

MNF...

AGARTALA, May 26 ? Central Government has extended a financial help of Rs 10.99 crore in the last financial year for the displaced Reang refugees presently sheltered in six camps at Kanchanpur.

The Reangs had come to North Tripura from adjacent Mizoram following fierce ethnic conflict between the Bru (Reang) and Lushai (Mizo) communities in October 1997. The exodus from Mizoram began on the night of October 15 and in phases the Reangs under constant threat and persecution from the majority community poured in the North district.

Several rounds of talks among the representatives of displaced...

Agartala, May 23: The Union home ministry has blacklisted as many as 824 NGOs operating in the Northeast and Sikkim for suspected links with militant outfits.

Sources said the ministry last week informed the governments of six states of the region ? only Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh do not figure in the list ? about the presence of pro-militant NGOs in their areas and specifically asked them not to extend any form of assistance to these.

Meghalaya tops the list with 323 NGOs of doubtful integrity, followed by Manipur, which has 197. Assam is third with 151 such organisations, Nagaland has...

AIZAWL, May 23 ? India urged Myanmar to rein in the North-east insurgents who have taken shelter in that country and make efforts to stop arms smuggling by the rebel groups, reports PTI.

Rajeev Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, who led the 17-member Indian delegation in the two-day sectoral level Indo-Myanmar talks here, sought the cooperation of Myanmar government in curtailing the operations of the insurgent groups from across the border.

Agarwal said that North-east insurgent groups like the NSCN(K), PLA, UNLF and ULFA have camps in Myanmar from where they create...

Guwahati, May 20: Ulfa ideologue and the outfit?s vice-chairman, Pradip Gogoi, today said a military operation by Bhutan to dismantle militant camps there would be the ?wrong move?.

Reacting to a report in The Telegraph today about Thimphu?s plans to dismantle all camps of the Ulfa and the NDFB by November, the jailed militant leader told newspersons outside a Tada court here that Bhutan could not expect to resolve the issue through aggression.

The Ulfa alone has nine camps in Bhutan.

Gogoi, who has been languishing in jail in Guwahati since his arrest in Calcutta in 1997, said Bhutan should...

GUWAHATI, May 19: The Royal Government of Bhutan has called upon its nationals to voluntarily join a government militia force to fight and remove the ULFA, NDFB and Kamatapur Liberation Organization (KLO) rebels operating from bases inside the tiny Himalayan kingdom, reports today said.

"When the security and sovereignty of our country is under threat, the true sons of the soil must step forward and not wait to be called upon to serve their country," Bhutan?s King Jigme Singhye Wangchuk was quoted as saying by Kuensel, the country?s national newspaper.

Addressing a group of people?s...

NEW DELHI, May 19 ? Alarmed at the presence of Northeast militants on its soil, Bhutan has decided to set up a counter-insurgency force to fight them and asked India to ensure that no more militants enter the tiny Himalayan Kingdom, reports PTI. ?They (North-east militants) have to be made to leave the country before they strengthened their presence in Bhutan,? a senior Bhutanese official Sonam Tshering was quoted as saying on the internet edition of government funded newspaper Kuensel.

Bhutan has asked militants to wind up their camps before June 30 failing which Government would take...

NEW DELHI, May 11 – Notwithstanding Bangladesh’s denials, India has given a list of 155 terrorist training camps operating at various places in that country, many with the help of ISI and Al-Qaeda and asked it to shut them down, reports PTI. While conveying its concern over the support by some fundamentalist organisations of Bangladesh to North-east terrorists, India at a recent high-level meeting has also sought deportation of 85 insurgents from the neighbouring country, official sources told PTI here today.

“We have information that ISI activities directed against India are on the rise in...