Himanta Biswa Sarma’s proactive and consistent role in resolving inter-state border disputes is being appreciated, but critics say it may be too early to celebrate
Another festering inter-state border dispute in the Northeast was declared “resolved”, with the Chief Ministers of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi.
Shah called the moment “historic” and a “huge achievement”. “By accepting the report, the two states have ended the dispute over the 800-km boundary,” the Union Home Minister declared.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the deal was marked by give-and-take on the part of both sides. He said, “I would like to thank the Arunachal government…In our Jorhat city, there is historically a very large land stretch of Arunachal Pradesh. After arriving at the agreement, as a goodwill gesture, the Arunachal government took the decision to give the right to that land to Assam.”
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Khandu, for his part, thanked his Assam counterpart. “It is because of his political will that this has happened,” Khandu added. “The peaceful coexistence between Assam and Arunachal will only increase.”
The dispute in question is over 123 villages that stretch across 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh and eight of Assam. After Thursday’s MoU, an understanding has been reached for 71 villages. However, it is important to note that at least 49 remain to be resolved.
An Assam government official involved with the border talks, said that the pending villages need “more depth and focused handling”. “The regional committees [set up by both states] are in consensus, but local people are yet to accept it…In the next six months, we have to engage the community for a final resolution,” he said.
Nonetheless, the pact is another feather in the cap for Assam CM Sarma under whom resolutions to several of Assam’s long-running border disputes with neighbouring states have been turbocharged.
Hours after signing the pact with Khandu, Sarma was already meeting his Nagaland counterpart, Neiphiu Rio, to move things on that front.
These border disputes are, to a large extent, a result of many northeastern states being administratively carved out of Assam over the years.
Sarma’s proactivity in the matter, some observers say, could also stem from a major embarrassment in July 2021 on the Assam-Mizoram border where six Assam policemen died after the two states’ forces violently clashed.
However, the efforts of the CM — who remains the convenor of the BJP-led North Eastern Democratic Alliance (NEDA) of non-Congress parties — to make amends by signing border pacts with other states is also seen as an attempt to ensure that the clout of Assam and his region remains intact.
This, critics say, may have meant committing to more than being actually able to deliver.
These concerns certainly came true in November 2022 when another border clash in the village of Mukroh along the Assam-Meghalaya border left six people dead, including one Assam forest guard. Ironically, The incident occurred months after a pact was signed between Assam and Meghalaya amid much fanfare and was hailed as “historic” by the BJP dispensation.
After the initial euphoria surrounding the most recent MoU subsided, it turned out that several local stakeholders were not convinced of the agreement. In short, the border dispute continues to linger. The learning from that episode should ideally bookend the celebrations around the current Assam-Arunachal pact.
Source : The Indian Express