GUWAHATI:
Finally the leaders of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) will come to the negotiating table. A team of senior leaders of the banned organization is set to arrive in India to sign a peace deal with the Indian government.
“Honouring and upholding the wishes and aspirations of the people of Koch-Kamtapur, the leadership of KLO will reach India within a very short time to participate in direct bilateral peace talks with the India government to restore the status quo of the historic separate state of Kamtapur,” KLO chairman Jibon Singha Koch said in a statement on January 11.
“The process of bilateral discussion between the India government and KLO on the issue of people of Koch-Kamtapur has reached its final stage under the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah with active meditation of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
“It has been decided to solve the long-standing demand of reformation of separate state Kamtapur as raised by Koch-Kamtapur people and its various representative organizations based on the historic treaty signed on August 18, 1949, between erstwhile India government and Independent Kamtapur.
“All-round cooperation, constructive suggestions from all classes of people of Kock-Kamtapur and various nationalistic organizations in resolving the issue of long pending demand of separate state of Kamtapur during the ensuing bilateral peace talks with India government,” he added.
On August 18, 1949, there was an agreement between independent India and independent Cooch Behar. This was the Cooch Behar Merger Agreement, the focal point of which was the declaration of Greater Cooch Behar or Kamtapur state as a C-category state.
After 70 years of the signing of an agreement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have taken initiative under the ambit of the constitution to grant C-category state status to Kamtapur or Greater Cooch Behar state.
It is also believed that the KLO leadership might team up with influential leader Ananta Rai Maharaj, who is believed to have clout in the Koch-Rajbongshi-dominated North Bengal and several districts of Assam.
This is not the first time that Jibon Singha has mentioned the demand for a separate state. In mid-2022, in a video released by KLO, he referred to the Mamata Banerjee government as “bahiragata (outsider)”.
Singha also named three MPs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), namely Cooch Behar MP Nisith Pramanik, Jalpaiguri MP Jayanta Roy and Alipurduar MP John Barla, as supporters of a separate Koch-Kamtapur state.
The KLO, which has been active in the western part of Assam and North Bengal and was once an ally of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Bhutan and Myanmar, has expressed its interest in peace talks with the government in December 2021.
The KLO was born in 1995 in an armed struggle for a separate Kamtapur carved out of the adjoining part of Assam and West Bengal.