To end their 50-year-old boundary discord, the Assam and Meghalaya governments on Tuesday signed a historic agreement in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah at the MHA office in New Delhi.
Speaking to reporters after the signing of the agreement, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma hailed the development saying “historic day for all of us”. He added, “As per the home minister’s advice, we started these talks. We decided that out of 12 dispute points, we can start one by one. A group of ministers (then) worked on this and we were able to find a solution.”
He further said that he hoped to resolve the remaining border issues in the next 6-7 months and vowed to work as per PM Narendra Modi’s dream to make the Northeast region India’s growth engine.
Meghalaya CM Conrad K Sangma echoed similar sentiments, saying: “We’ll do our best to ensure that we take this forward to resolve other differences as well.” “We have started this to resolve border differences and we have completed the first phase. We want to thank Assam CM Himanta ji,” he added.
Speaking on the boundary agreement to reporters, Shah said the dispute has been resolved and the remaining issues would be fixed soon. “Today, a 50-year-old pending boundary dispute between Assam and Meghalaya has been resolved. Six out of 12 points of the dispute have been resolved, which comprises nearly 70% of the boundary. The remaining six points will be resolved at the earliest,” he said.
A draft resolution of the agreement was submitted by both the chief ministers to Shah on January 31 for examination and consideration by the MHA. The governments of Assam and Meghalaya had come up with a draft resolution to resolve their border disputes in six of the 12 “areas of difference” along the 884-km boundary.
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 had sparked in 1972 when Meghalaya was carved out of Assam. The border issues were a result of different readings of the demarcation of boundaries in the initial agreement for the new state’s creation.
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