Guwahati, Sept 21 (PTI). The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) President Bhupen Bora on Tuesday said his party views Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's talks with the NSCN(IM) on Nagaland with ''suspicion and mistrust'' and fears Assam's interests may be compromised in the long run.

Also Read | Air Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari Appointed Next IAF Chief, To Take Charge From Air Cheif Marshal RKS Bhadauria on October 1.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has deputed the Assam Chief Minister to talk with the NSCN(IM) in a bid to take the peace process forward.

Also Read | R-Value For COVID-19 In India Drops Below 1 In Mid-September.

''The question now arises in what capacity will he talk with the NSCN(I-M)... As a Chief Minister can he go and hold talks without taking the Assembly and Cabinet into confidence? The NSCN(I-M) is known to be a supporter of 'Greater Nagalim' and for all we know it is supposed to include parts of Assam," Borah said, adding that the Congress was against transferring any parcels of Assam territory.

''Can the people of Assam trust Sarma to defend Assam's interests when he had miserably failed to do so in the recent Mizoram-Assam border issue.... Can he be trusted to defend Assam's interests in his talks with NSCN(I-M) when his blind allegiance is to the diktats of the BJP High Command'', he alleged.

It was also reported that the Chief Ministers of Nagaland and Manipur have also been asked to be a part of the talks along with Sarma but ''we were told that the Manipur Chief Minister decided not to participate in the talks due to differences on the Greater Nagalim issue", Bora said.

The Congress wants the Government of India to place the contents of the Framework Agreement of 2015 before the public. It also seeks that the Prime Minister, Home Minister and Sarma should make their ''intentions public to the people of Assam before venturing into such doubtful and dubious expeditions in the name of peace talks'', the state Congress chief said.

In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the Nagaland Framework Agreement of Government of India with NSCN (I-M) by declaring that this marks the end of a problem. However, the Framework Agreement was not publicly divulged and ''though the Congress had demanded at that time that the contents of the Agreement should be made public, till today nobody knows what is there in it,'' Bora said.

Subsequently, the Prime Minister appointed a trusted aide, Naga Peace Talks Interlocutor R N Ravi as Governor of Nagaland in 2019. However, Bora alleged this did not help take forward the talks and the Framework Agreement appeared to have become a "Discord Agreement" with public spats between leaders of NSC(I-M) and the Governor becoming news headlines. PTI DG

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)