NEW DELHI, March 29: In a historic move, the chief ministers of Assam and Meghalaya Himanta Biswa Sarma and Conrad Sangma respectively, on Tuesday signed an agreement to partly settle the border disputes between the two states which were pending for the last 50 years. The two chief ministers signed the pact at the Union Home Ministry in Delhi, in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah and officials from both the states and the Ministry.
Shah called it a “historic day” and credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for focussing on the peace process in the northeast, and also its culture and development. The pact will resolve the protracted dispute in six of the 12 places along the 884.9 km border between the two states.
The Home Minister said with the signing of the agreement, 70 per cent of the border dispute between the two states has been resolved. There are 36 villages in the six places, covering an area of 36.79 sq km, with regard to which the agreement has been reached.
Out of the 12 points of dispute between Assam and Meghalaya, the six areas with relatively less critical differences were taken up in the first phase. Sangma thanked the Home Minister and also credited the development to Sarma. “Today the first phase of the resolution has been done. It could only be possible because of Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma,” he said.
The Meghalaya Chief Minister added that Modi and Shah gave the necessary push to resolve the long-pending border dispute between the two states. “There has been a lot of push from Prime Minister and Home Minister that they would like to see that these differences (Assam-Meghalaya border issue) are resolved because if India and Bangladesh can resolve the border issues then why can’t the states also. This is the stand they took,” said Sangma.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Assam and Meghalaya two months after a draft resolution was submitted by the Chief Ministers of both states to Shah on January 31 for examination and consideration by the union Home Ministry. According to the proposed recommendations for the 36.79 square km of land, Assam will keep 18.51 square km and give the remaining 18.28 square km to Meghalaya.
The long-standing land dispute was sparked in 1972 when Meghalaya was carved out of Assam. The border issues came as a result of different readings of the demarcation of boundaries in the initial agreement for the new state’s creation.
(Manas Dasgupta)
