‘Rattled’ Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma scurries to resolve border disputes

GUWAHATI: Rattled by the recent hostility on the border with Mizoram in which six Assam policemen were shot dead by Mizoram police, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma has put himself on the fast track to settle all the decades-old disputes over the constitutional boundary the state has with its neighbours in the region.
Barring Manipur and Tripura, all the other states — Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya — which were carved out of Assam to become full-fledged states at different points of time, have disputed their respective boundaries with Assam.

After assuming charge as chief minister of the state on May 10, Sarma listed resolving all these border disputes as one of his top priorities. Last month, Union home minister Amit Shah personally reminded Sarma of the pending border disputes at a meeting with all northeast chief ministers at Umiam in Meghalaya.

On Friday, after a fruitful meeting with his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma on finding ways to end the dispute between two states, Sarma said the long-pending border issues with Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland required different approaches. “The issues are different in nature. With Arunachal and Nagaland, the matter is in the Supreme Court. With Meghalaya and Mizoram, we do not have any litigation in the apex court,” he said. He added that in case of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, it depends on the Supreme Court but in case of Meghalaya and Mizoram, “where there are no litigations, it will be easy to resolve issues through mutual negotiations”.
“But nevertheless, Assam is also in touch with the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh to see whether we can go for an out-of-court settlement,” Sarma added.
“Both the Asssam and Nagland governments have agreed that the issue could be resolved in the Supreme Court. So you have to have different kinds of negotiations with every state. There cannot be a common formula of resolving border disputes with all the four states,” Sarma said.

“With Meghalaya, we have reached this stage of CM-level talks. Hopefully, with Arunachal Pradesh also we can come to a level of mutual trust and confidence,” Sarma said.
On Nagaland, the chief minister said an agreement was recently signed to maintain the status quo in strict terms. On the other hand, Assam signed another agreement with Mizoram on Thursday to maintain peace along the inter-state boundary and not to deploy each other’s police forces and forest staff anywhere near the disputed the border, where a neutral central force will be deployed.
Sarma, who maintains that border disputes have become a deterrent to development for all states, said Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh have many common issues like taxation, trade. “So these border disputes always affect our relationships. We feel handicapped and because we have a border dispute, we are not able to be more productive, which would have helped the three states,” he said.