Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma arrived in Shillong on Friday to iron out the border disputes between Assam and Meghalaya. He has a clear mandate to do so and is expected to carry out that mandate keeping Assam’s best interests at heart. In Meghalaya, we have several discordant voices and quite a few stakeholders who may not necessarily agree with what the Government through its Chief Minister will eventually decide. In the past few days, the Assam and Meghalaya governments had been flagging the issue of “give and take.” This is a utilitarian view that would involve a mutual ceding of territories presently under dispute. This also involves a process of redrawing boundaries after studying maps that existed before Meghalaya was partitioned from Assam. The difference between the two states is that in Meghalaya, the community are supposedly the real owners of the land and the chieftains – the Syiems and Dollois are the custodians of such land in the Khasi-Jaintia areas which are also the location of the disputes. Unlike in Assam, where land belongs to the state and it has the authority to mow down shops and other commercial establishments that encroach on roads and highways, in Meghalaya that sort of action is unthinkable. During the chief ministership of Prafulla Mahanta, several shops in Dispur and adjoining areas were brought down for road widening and for construction of flyovers.
In Meghalaya the state owns no land other than revenue land and reserved forests. It becomes imperative therefore that the Syiems and Dollois are involved in the process of resolving the border disputes and that they produce their maps so that their claims represented by the Government of Meghalaya are backed by concrete evidence. In Meghalaya the Congress party has also asserted that it should be made part of the border disputes resolution process. That is only fair since at least two Congress MLAs represent the people in quite a few disputed areas of Ri Bhoi District. The Assam Police has also begun staking claim to parts of Khanapara. Pilangkata with a substantial Khasi population has now virtually come under the administration of Assam which asserts that Langpih in West Khasi Hills is part of its territory.
The ‘give and take’ narrative has been created essentially to soften the contours of the conflict. Is the Chief Minister of Meghalaya authorized to cede land that does not belong to the state, unless the people of those areas and their Chieftains/Dollois agree? This is a tough question to answer and the dispute cannot be resolved in a hurry. It will require several sittings before an amicable solution is arrived at.
