A new team of Naga Students Federation (NSF) for the tenure 2023-2025 took over at a function held at its office, here on Saturday. The new team will be led by Medovi Rhi as president.
Medovi Rhi, in his short speech thanked the Nagas for reposing faith in him and electing him as the president of the federation. He lauded the outgoing president for successfully completing his tenure and also for the grand success of the general conference at Ukhrul. The gathering at the conference was a symbolic strength of NSF and was also an act of conviction and aspiration of the people to show the strength of the Nagas to the rest of the people. Rhi said he was standing up as the president with a clear vision of unity, trust and a sense of patriotism among the people. He sought the support of the people as the new tenure assumes office and carry on with its activities working for the welfare of the people.
Addressing media person after the function, outgoing president, Kegwayhun Tep thanked the people for their support during his tenure and said the federation was able to mobilise its members in four states including Nagaland, Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh and neighbouring Myanmar.
Tep expressed happiness that the federation could successfully conduct its general conference from August 23-25 at Ukhrul town, Manipur under the theme, “Solidarity Beyond Borders” hosted by Tangkhul Katamnao Saklong (TKS). He lauded all the federating and subordinate units for positively contributing towards the conference and also participated in the deliberations on solidarity of Nagas.
Kegwayhun pointed out that the inclement weather coupled with the law and order situation in Manipur was challenging, however, the conference was successful overall with the support from all the Nagas. He said the outgoing executives had faced a lot of challenges with some success and failures which had made the federation wiser.
Among the achievements, Tep said, the introduction and implementation of Nagaland Staff Selection Board (NSSB) in the state of Nagaland was remarkable.
Tep thanked chief minister Neiphiu Rio and the legislators for heeding and honouring the voice of the people and introducing NSSB. He assured that NSF would continue to extend its fullest support towards NSSB and the government in order to ensure that meritocracy and fairness are always followed in any process of examination.
He hoped that NSF’s demand to either decrease or scrape the 12.5% viva voce mark would be reduced to 5% of the total mark in the next cycle of vice voce as announced by the government.
Tep pointed out that streamlining of RMSA and SSA teachers which had been pending for sometime was sorted out and absorbed those deprived teachers as state cadets.
He pointed out that when the Oting incident occurred NSF organised mass rallies in almost all the Naga inhabited areas and was the only mass based organisation that demanded a special Assembly Session to discuss about the incident.
Subsequently, basing on the demand of the federation few police stations were lifted from the purview of AFSPA. He assured that NSF would continue to voice out until AFPSA was completely removed from all the Naga inhabited areas.
Tep recalled that just before the last tenure got over the federation’s office was vandalised which was “very sudden and surprising”, however, the federation was leaving it upon the people to judge and deliver justice.
In this regard he urged all the organisations and civil societies to come together and come up with a solution to the issue.
Outgoing general secretary, Supuni Ng Philo said it was a “good journey altogether” and that he was happy to have served the Nagas on the capacity as the GS for the past two years.
Answering to a query on the ongoing issue with Naga Club, Tep said Angami Public Organisation and Kohima Village Council had written to NSF in order to bring a solution to the problem.
He said NSF had replied to the letter saying it would not be able to agree to certain points after which no further communication has been made.
He said NSF had made it clear through its resolution that unless the “so-called Naga Club” was mandated by the Naga people, the federation could not handover the building to the Club nor recognise the organisation.
On the issue of differences with ASU in regard to the NIDA issue, Tep said it was a known fact that in the course of a journey differences and misunderstandings would always come up.
He said it was unfortunate that one of the strongest unit of NSF did not extend their cooperation particularly towards this outgoing tenure, however he said he was looking forward to the ASU’s participation with the new leadership of the federation.