Guwahati: The State Election Commission (SEC) of Nagaland has urged the Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation (ENPO) to reconsider “its stance of asking citizens to abstain from participating” in the June 26 elections to the urban local bodies in the state.
In a statement, the SEC, Nagaland, said the method adopted by the ENPO to express their stand on collective abstention from participating in the ULB election “needs a reasoned reconsideration” and cited four reasons why the organisation, representing eight tribes from six districts from eastern Nagaland needs to review its stand.
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The commission then said it was committed to holding free and fair elections as notified on April 29 and hoped people would be “able to freely and willingly participate in exercising the constitutional right to vote and/or to contest as is deemed necessary to discharge the vital functions of local self-governance”.
The SEC’s appeal came a day after the ENPO rejected the Nagaland government’s appeal and remained firm on abstaining from participating in the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) elections, scheduled on June 26.
ENPO Secretary W. Manwang Konyak on Friday said that they did not receive any written appeal and only saw in the media that the Nagaland government has made an appeal not to boycott the ULB polls.
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“We have to go by the decision of our grassroots level people and organisation. We would abstain from participating in the ULB polls,” Konyak said.
After a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, the Nagaland government on Thursday urged the ENPO not to boycott the vital ULB polls.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister K.G. Kenye, who is the Spokesman of the Nagaland government said that the government has appealed to ENPO and its constituent bodies to participate in the ULB elections, which are being conducted on the directions of the Supreme Court.
The ULB election is for empowering local self-governance and facilitating development and uplift of the citizens at the grassroots, he said.
Since 2010, the ENPO has been demanding a separate ‘Frontier Nagaland Territory’ or a separate state comprising the six eastern Nagaland districts — Kiphire, Longleng, Mon, Noklak, Shamator, and Tuensang and it also boycotted the election to the lone Nagaland Lok Sabha seat on April 19 in support of its demand.
The ENPO Secretary said that they have already informed the State Election Commission (SEC) that the people of the six districts would abstain from voting in the ULB polls, covering three Municipal Councils and 36 Town Councils.
Konyak said that the ENPO had, on March 19, adopted a unanimous resolution that the people of the region would not participate in any central and state elections due to the delay in creating the ‘Frontier Nagaland Territory (FNT)’ as offered and assured by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on December 7, 2023.