SHILLONG, Nov 18: The Congress on Thursday warned that the state will witness a restive Christmas if the government hurries to take decisions towards resolving the state’s boundary disputes with Assam.
“We are looking at a restless Christmas. This is absolutely not fair and we cannot allow the government to put a seal and agree to any plan without the legislators being privy to it,” Congress leader, Ampareen Lyngdoh said.
There are 12 areas of differences and in the first phase six ‘less-complicated’ areas will be taken up. Both states have constituted three regional committees each towards resolving the protracted problem. The committees, each headed by a minister, have already conducted joint visits to the disputed areas and spoke to the residents to try and understand the problem.
“I thought it should have been a non-political approach. We will be with the government provided it allows us to have access to information,” Lyngdoh said.
She described as “ridiculous” Chief Minister, Conrad K Sangma’s statement that the two states will try to resolve the disputes in at least six locations before Christmas.
“I wonder how the government will address this huge task in such a short span of time and what the points of agreement will be like,” she said, adding, “The million dollar question is why the chief minister of Assam has to place before us a seemingly unachievable target.”
Lyngdoh said while two states are engaged in resolving the disputes, one is calling the shots.
“Why is this domination that even the venue of discussion and the date of completion of the exercise are to be decided by Assam? I don’t see the CM of Meghalaya saying anything on behalf of the people of the state,” she said.
Lyngdoh said it will be imperative that the government involves the legislators since the CM himself has already stated the approach towards resolving the problem is non-political.
“If you feel that you will be able to achieve this target prior to Christmas it will be in the fitness of things to involve all the legislators,” she said.
“Our MLA (Kimfa Marbaniang) was a member of that committee. He just gate crashed along with the MDC of Rambrai-Jyrngam. They never received any invitation but they just attended because they heard that the meet was happening,” she informed.
“We are not going to be aligned to this government to presume that we are all consenting to an idea which we have no information about,” she said.
Stating that the Congress will fight tooth and nail, she said there is another school of thought that questioned whether or not Langpih is a disputed area and for which, the Congress will start a fact-finding exercise.