Suspected United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) militants blew up a railway track near western Assam's Goalpara town and two rival rebel groups fought it out in central Assam's Karbi Anglong district as the Northeast defied a 17-hour boycott call by 12 insurgent outfits to celebrate the 65th Independence Day.

A Northeast Frontier Railway spokesperson said miscreants damaged a 10m stretch of a broad gauge track near Goalpara early Monday morning. "A goods train carrying fuel was scheduled to cross that stretch minutes after the blast," he said.

Sixty-four years after it declared independence from British India along with Pakistan, the militant National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) has slammed former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the Naga crisis. "Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru held divergent views on the Naga political problem. While Gandhi believed Nagas had the right to be independent Nehru wanted to crush them by force," said NSCN (I-M) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah at Camp Hebron, the outfit's peace headquarters near Dimapur, Nagaland's commercial hub 75 km west of capital Kohima.