ULFA-I declares 3-month ceasefire

The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) has declared a three-month unilateral ceasefire with speedy impact.

The announcement on Saturday got here lower than per week after Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma appealed to the extremist teams in Assam to shun violence and pursue peace talks.

Paresh Baruah, the outfit’s self-styled commander-in-chief mentioned in an Assamese assertion that the COVID-19 scenario prompted the ULFA-I to “unilaterally suspend all military operations in Assam for three months from May 15”.

Charge in opposition to safety forces

He accused the Indian safety forces in addition to the Assam police of hatching “some clandestine plan to malign” his outfit. This was in reference to 2 grenade blasts that killed three individuals, together with a 12-year-old boy in japanese Assam’s Tinsukia district inside 4 days.

This is the second occasion of the anti-talks faction of the ULFA declaring a unilateral ceasefire. The outfit had in 2005 suspended operations to facilitate a workforce of mediators headed by the late creator Mamoni Raisom Goswami to dealer a peace deal.

The workforce was referred to as the People’s Consultative Group.

Abductions

Security forces had stepped up stress on the ULFA-I after it kidnapped two staff of a personal oil drilling agency in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh on December 21, 2020. The two have been launched after nearly 4 months.

On April 21, members of the outfit kidnapped three staff of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited from an oil rig in japanese Assam’s Charaideo district. Two of them have been rescued after an encounter in Nagaland’s Mon district on April 23 however the third – Ritul Saikia – remains to be lacking.

The ULFA was fashioned in 1979 to combat for a sovereign Assam. It break up into the pro-talks and anti-talks group three a long time later.

The pro-talks group is headed by the outfit’s chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa.