GUWAHATI, August 6: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday maintained that the long-pending border issues with its neighbours – Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland – required different ways of negotiations, with each to be “dealt with differently”.
“The issues are different in nature…the matter of Arunachal and Nagaland is in the honourable Supreme Court. With Meghalaya and Mizoram, we do not have any litigation in the apex court…so it is always easy to resolve issues through mutual negotiations when there are no legal complications,” Sarma said, during a media conference after the CM-level Assam-Meghalaya border talks, here.
“But nevertheless, Assam is also in touch with the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh to see whether any out-of-court settlement is possible,” the chief minister said.
“The last time when we were in Shillong, we could see that Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh have so many common issues… so these border disputes always affect our relationships. We feel handicapped …Because we have a border dispute, we are not able to do something more which could have helped the three states,” he said.
“So with Assam and Meghalaya have reached this stage (second CM-level talks)…Hopefully, with Arunachal Pradesh also we can come to a level of mutual trust and confidence,” Sarma said.
Regarding Nagaland, the chief minister said that an agreement was recently signed whereby it was agreed upon to maintain the status quo in strict terms.
“Both the governments (Assam and Nagaland) have agreed that the issue could be solved at the platform of 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 clarified.
It may be mentioned that Assam and Mizoram had on Thursday set the crucial bilateral dialogue on the long-pending inter-state boundary row rolling post the July 26 firing, arriving at a consensus to maintain peace along the inter-state boundary and welcoming the deployment of a neutral central force in the areas of conflict and confrontation.