Border disputes can get nasty. The northeast of the country, which shares borders with several countries such as China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan, has had its brush with some of these border disputes.
However, not everything is going well between the states of the region.
The recent blast along the Assam-Mizoram border in which several people on both sides were injured and some huts were set on fire last Saturday is the latest of many such incidents that the less populated and ethnically diverse region of the country has reported in recent decades.
Assam and Mizoram share a limit of 164.6 kilometers (km).
Mizoram was part of an undivided Assam until 1972, when it initially became a Union Territory (UT) and later a full-fledged state in 1987.
There have been minor skirmishes in the past with Mizoram seeking to delineate the border on the basis of the Bengal Eastern Border Regulations (BEFR), 1873.
Although the Assam and Mizoram governments agreed to maintain the status quo in the dispute several years ago, there have been transgressions and usurpations with each state calling out to the other, to the dismay of the Center.
The last incident
The matter came to a head after some Vairengte residents in the Kolasib district of Mizoram set fire to makeshift huts made by Lailapur residents in the Cachar district of the Barak Valley in Assam on an allegedly contested stretch of land.
Mizoram claimed that the huts were built in no man’s land, while Assam denied the former’s claims.
Saturday’s incident comes on the heels of a similar outbreak between the two states on October 9 at the border along Assam’s Karimganj district and Mizoram’s Mamit district, when a hut and part of a walnut crop caught fire. betel belonging to two residents of Mizoram. .
Assam claimed that the area, where the cultivation took place, belongs to the Singla reserve forest in Karimganj district, while Mizoram insisted that residents of his state have been farming there for a long time.
Both states have approached the Center seeking a resolution after Saturday’s outbreak.
On Monday, the Union’s Home Affairs Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla held a video conference with the chief secretaries of both states and asked them to resolve the dispute amicably and mutually.
Officials from Assam and Mizoram also met on Monday and agreed to keep the peace and work together to resume the movement of hundreds of trucks of goods that have been stranded at the border since Saturday after the blast.
The Assam connection
Border disputes in the region mainly involve Assam because four states like Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Meghalaya were carved out of the most populous state in the region over the years.
Assam shares an 804 km boundary with Arunachal Pradesh. Although there were initially no disputes, subsequent allegations of encroachments have led to multiple disputes and concomitant violence. A lawsuit has been pending in the Supreme Court (SC) since 1989 on the matter.
Assam and Nagaland share a 434 km boundary and the border dispute remains unresolved even after more than five decades. Nagaland has been claiming parts of Assam as his own, while the latter is accusing the former of encroaching on thousands of hectares (ha) of his land.
Both states have refused to accept the recommendations of two commissions established by the Center to resolve the problem, and a lawsuit has been pending in the superior court since 1988.
There have been several violent clashes over multiple border disputes.
More than 100 people have been killed, most from Assam, in attacks by Nagaland gunmen in separate incidents in 1979, 1985 and 2014.
The Assam-Meghalaya border dispute is more than four decades old and there are 12 contentious points along the 733-kilometer boundary they share. Several rounds of talks have failed to resolve the problem.
Last September, Meghalaya’s Chief Deputy Minister Prestone Tynsong said 56 incidents of border disputes between the two states had occurred since 2017.
The NEDA solution?
Long-standing border disputes were expected to be resolved after a shift in the power equations in the volatile region over the past four years.
A coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party formed the Assam government in 2016. The BJP’s rise to power led to the waning fortunes of Congress, which was comparatively a political force to be reckoned with in the region compared to its receding footprints. in the rest of the country, in 2016.
Soon, the BJP managed to improvise governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura and is part of the ruling coalition in Meghalaya and Nagaland.
In Mizoram, the Mizo National Front (MNF), which is a component of the Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA), a BJP-led front of anti-congressional parties in the region formed in 2016, is in power.
Border disputes within the region were at the center of deliberations during the fourth NEDA conclave held in Guwahati in September 2019.
The Union Minister of Internal Affairs, Amit Shah, also attended the conclave.
“We want the border disputes in the northeast to be resolved soon. If the border disputes between India and Bangladesh can be resolved, why can’t we find a lasting solution to the border disputes between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh or Assam and Nagaland? Shah had questioned in his speech at the NEDA conclave.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, a key Assam minister and NEDA coordinator, had echoed Shah and urged all top ministers in the region to address disputes in a limited way before the country celebrates 75 years of independence in 2022. .
Will the disputed states meet the deadline?
Perhaps an amicable solution, managed by NEDA, could lead to border peace and harmony between states.
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