A Myanmar-based splinter of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim has announced the formation of a nine-member “provisional government” and named Ikato I. Chishi Swu — son of the late NSCN co-founder Isak Chishi Swu — as its chairman, formalising a widening rift inside India’s oldest and largest Naga insurgent organisation and adding a fresh complication along the India-Myanmar border.

The faction, which calls itself the NSCN/GPRN “Eastern Flank” and operates out of Myanmar, said the decision was taken at what it described as an “Extraordinary Joint Emergency Meeting” of its civil workers and army officers on July 21 at a camp it referred to as Mt Horeb, chaired by Lieutenant General (Retired) H.S. Ramsan. A communique carrying the announcement, issued through an official identified as Edward Sayai, Additional Secretary to the NSCN/GPRN, was reported Thursday by the Ukhrul-based outlet Ukhrul Times and, separately, by EastMojo.

In the statement, the Eastern Flank declared void a set of expulsion orders that the NSCN/GPRN’s Hebron-headquartered mainstream leadership — led by veteran negotiator Thuingaleng Muivah — had issued earlier this year against Ramsan, fellow retired officer A. Raman and several others including Chishi Swu, characterising the expulsions as an attempt to sideline internal dissent. The faction also rejected a set of negotiating positions it referred to as the “Competencies,” which it said the Hebron leadership had put before the Government of India as part of the long-running peace process, arguing they amounted to a surrender of the group’s founding demand for Naga sovereignty outside the Indian union.

The Eastern Flank’s statement invoked a November 2024 warning by Muivah that the NSCN would resume “violent armed resistance” if New Delhi rejected third-party mediation to break the deadlock over implementing the 2015 Framework Agreement, and argued — in its own reading of events — that the ceasefire the group has observed with India since 1997 no longer holds. It said it would pursue “both political and armed resistance” going forward and called on Naga political workers to rally behind the new provisional body.

Chishi Swu’s alignment with the Myanmar-based faction was itself reported by regional and national outlets earlier this year as a significant setback for NSCN-IM, given his standing as the son of one of the organisation’s two founding leaders. NSCN-IM has held a ceasefire with India since 1997 and has spent years negotiating toward a final settlement, but talks have repeatedly stalled over Naga demands for a separate flag and constitution, positions New Delhi has resisted conceding given their implications for neighbouring states.

Neither the NSCN-IM leadership at Hebron nor Indian security agencies had issued a public response to the Eastern Flank’s announcement at the time of publication.