Muivah has been camping at Viswema village near Mao checkgate along the Nagaland-Manipur boundary after he was stopped by the Manipur government there on May 6 from visiting his birthplace Somdal in the state's Ukhrul district.
The incident triggered large-scale violence at Mao where two Naga students were killed when Muivah's supporters clashed with Manipur security forces. Subsequently, Naga students in Manipur as well as Nagaland laid a siege to National Highway 39 - choking the main supply line to the state.
Pillai, a day after closeting with Manipur chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh in Imphal, flew on Wednesday to Viswema with R.S. Pandey, the Centre's interlocutor for talks with the NSCN(I-M).
But what transpired from the 90-minute meeting with Muivah was disappointing. The Naga leader was disappointed. "Hope, the government of India will resolve the situation," he later said.
Muivah reiterated that his patience as well as that of the Naga people should not be tested. He also said he wouldn't turn back from Viswema - a request made by the Centre - but move forward to visit his birthplace which is almost 220 km away in Manipur.
" The Centre should have applied its authority to prevail upon the Manipur government to break the impasse, which was not the creation of Nagas but of the Manipur government. We will not wait for long. There is no reason to go back from here," Muivah told PTI. " We will go ahead with our programme to Somdal village any way. We told Pillai and Pandey about our disappointment over the way things have been handled.
After all, the Centre cleared our visit to Somdal," he added.
On either side of the inter- state boundary, there was uneasy calm.
Pillai and Pandey visited a relief camp about 12 km south of Kohima, where nearly a 1,000 fleeing villagers from Mao were sheltered.
" We have requested them to return home. They have nothing to be afraid of since the curfew from Mao has been lifted," Pandey said.
Funeral services of the students who died at Mao were held in the morning at Kalinamai village in Manipur's Senapati district. The Manipur cabinet ordered a magisterial inquiry into the duo's death in the police firing and agreed to pay compensation to their families and those wounded.
To defuse the tension, Naga civil societies have called a meeting in Guwahati on Thursday with their counterparts in Imphal.
But Imphal and several other districts continued to reel under an acute shortage of food, fuel and medicines because of the blockade on the highway. Hundreds of trucks carrying essentials and medicines were stranded in the adjoining state of Nagaland.
The Regional Institute of Medical Sciences and private ones like Shija Hospital have announced total or partial shutdown of their surgical units and some other facilities. Long queues were witnessed at petrol pumps as people jostled for the last drops of fuel to fill up their tanks.
" You don't get a litre of petrol even if one is willing to pay Rs 400, while rice is selling for anything between Rs 80 to Rs 100 a kg," said a local trader in Imphal.
The government was working out plans to get supplies via an alternate route from adjoining Assam with army escorts.
" National Highway 53 connecting Assam with Manipur can be used, but the road is in a very poor shape," a government official said.