The Nagaland cabinet, headed by chief minister Neiphiu Rio, on Thursday held a meeting with gazetted officers from eastern Nagaland to “discuss the decision” of the people of eastern Nagaland to boycott the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on April 19.

An official said the meeting, which discussed the issues related to the elections, started at 4pm and ended at 6.30pm but did not share any details.

The notice for Thursday’s meeting held at the CM secretariat in Kohima was issued by chief secretary J. Alam on Wednesday.

Nagaland, ruled by the NDPP-BJP alliance since 2018, has one Lok Sabha seat.

Eastern Nagaland comprises six districts, sends 20 MLAs to the 60-member state Assembly and has 30 per cent of the state’s population.

The Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation (ENPO), the apex body of seven tribes from the six districts, in a letter to the Election Commission on Monday, had conveyed the “collective” decision of the people of Eastern Nagaland to “abstain” from the April 19 polls.

This is the second meeting the cabinet held on the ENPO decision to abstain from polls since March 30.

On that day, the cabinet had issued a joint appeal with the Eastern Nagaland Legislative Union (ENLU) in Kohima to the ENPO “not to abstain” from the April 19 polls “but to participate in the elections and complete our democratic duty for the greater benefit of the region and its constituents”.

ENPO took the decision to abstain from the polls because of the MHA’s “failure” to create a separate autonomous Nagaland Frontier Territory (FNT) before the announcement of the Lok Sabha polls on March 16.

The demand for a separate state was first raised by the ENPO in 2010 because
of the underdevelopment of the six districts compared with other areas of the
state.