Author: Rahul Karmakar (rahul.karmakar@hindustantimes.com)
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: November 1, 2013
URL: http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/iphone/homepage.aspx#_articleb4dd2ff5-57d1-4b4d-b829-29f88848d78a/waarticleb4dd2ff5-57d1-4b4d-b829-29f88848d78a/b4dd2ff5-57d1-4b4d-b829-29f88848d78a//true

ANGRY Protesters vow to pay tax, but only to ‘one government’

Some 7,000 people took part in a ‘banned’ rally to protest collecting “taxes” by rebel groups in the name of “Naga nationalism”. They resolved to pay tax, but to only “one government”. The turnout was unprecedented in Nagaland, where the fear of guns often holds people down. GUWAHATI: About 7,000 people on Thursday took part in a ‘banned’ rally to protest collecting “taxes” by rebel groups in the name of “Naga nationalism”.

They resolved to pay tax, but to only “one government”.

The rally, in Nagaland’s trade hub Dimapur, was organised by the Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation (ACAUT), a new organisation comprising various social, business and church groups.

The turnout was unprecedented in Nagaland, where the fear of guns often holds people down. Similar attempts had evoked lukewarm response in the past.

“The success of the rally underscores the people’s frustration with the state machinery that does little to check collection of multiple taxes by various groups,” an ACAUT spokesperson said. The rally, he added, ended with the passing of three resolutions.

The first was “pay one tax to one government”, though it did not specify whether it was to be the democratically elected state government or the parallel ones run by rebel groups such as the three factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland.

However, the second resolution — an appeal to all Naga factions to unite and form one government — pointed at the inevitability of paying “revolutionary taxes”.

The ACAUT also asked the Nagaland government to form a panel headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or a high court to look at the issue of multiple taxation.