OUR CORRESPONDENT
GUWAHATI:
The Opposition Congress in Assam, on Saturday, said that it would move the Supreme Court if the government does not shelve the “give-and-take” formula to find a solution to the five-decade-long Assam-Meghalaya boundary disputes.
The Assam government has adopted a proposal on resolving the issue in six areas. According to the proposal, 50 per cent of the disputed land will go to Meghalaya and the remaining to Assam.
“We do not agree in principle with the solution on the border row with Meghalaya. The decision is one-sided” Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president Bhupen Kumar Bora and Assam Congress Legislature Party (ACLP) leader Debabrata Saikia said in a letter to state’s chief secretary Jishnu Baruah on Saturday.
“We have informed the chief minister during an all-party meeting on January 18 that the matter should be discussed on the floor of the Assam Assembly before taking any final decision. But surprisingly, the state government has submitted its final recommendations to the ministry of home affairs (MHA) without raising the issue in the Assembly,” Bora and Saikia said in the letter.
“We opposed the decision taken this way because the matter is sensitive and Assam also has such disputes with some other states. We urged the chief minister to convene an Assembly session before taking such an important decision,” they said.
“Without any endorsement by the state assembly, how can the state government on its own give away land,” they questioned.
Such a decision will reduce the land of the state as Assam has border disputes with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram, and the state government will have to adopt the same strategy in every case,” they added.
The Assam cabinet had on January 19 approved the recommendations of the regional committees formed by the two states to resolve border disputes in six areas in the first phase.
Three committees each were formed by the two-state governments in August 2021 after two rounds of talks between Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma to resolve the vexed issue in a phased manner.
As per the joint final set of recommendations of the committees, out of 36.79 sq km of the disputed area taken up for settlement in the first phase, Assam will get full control over 18.51 sq km and Meghalaya on 18.28 sq km.
Sarma and Sangma met Union home minister Amit Shah in the national capital on January 20 with the recommendations of the committees so that the Centre takes the matter forward.