The declaration of the Disturbed Area provision is fundamentally at odds with the mutually accommodative integration endeavour of the Nagas with the Indian Union as envisioned in the 2015 framework agreement.

While decades of counterinsurgency operations and peace processes have taken the sting out of the region’s major insurgencies, collaboration between groups continues to pose security challenges, particularly in the exploitable border areas adjacent to the upper Sagaing Region of Northwest Myanmar.

Maximum autonomy may be accorded in ethnic, cultural and developmental realms to autonomous councils for all Naga areas in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and even Assam, through suitable amendment to the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

Subject to a political consensus, there may still be some scope for a solution short of a full-fledged Gorkhaland state

Regulated borders with greater emphasis on developing people-to-people contact and cross-border trade initiatives are likely to yield greater security benefits as against a closed border.

While the Manipur government’s decision to create seven new districts has come in the wake of popular demands for improved administrative efficiency, there has been fierce opposition from Naga bodies which view it as an attempt to divide the Naga people