SHILLONG, Jan 17: Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi said the border pact between Assam and Meghalaya was nothing more than a photo-op.
He said the police forces of Assam and Mizoram were firing at each other after Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with the chief ministers and the DGPs of the Northeast on the law-and-order front.
Drawing a parallel, he said the Mukroh incident happened after the CMs of Assam and Meghalaya signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to settle border disputes in six sectors. Five Meghalaya villagers were killed in the incident.
“It is highly unfortunate and condemnable, a failure of both governments and the chief ministers and it shows how the signing was a mere photo-op,” Gogoi said.
He insisted that the border settlement cannot be done by two chief ministers sitting in their rooms as it affects the people living in those areas.
“They are not talking about the boundary of their homes. It is the boundary between two states and I think it is quite arrogant of them to go ahead with the MoU without taking the people on the ground into confidence,” he added.
Gogoi also said the chief ministers of the Northeastern states should be strong, champion their own people and their own land and not be arm-twisted by those sitting in Dispur, Nagpur or New Delhi.
“Sometimes I feel that the Assam CM craves TRP and if his name does not come in the newspapers regularly, he feels a sense of anxiety. Sometimes he may arm-twist his neighbouring chief ministers into signing something which they don’t want so that he gets his TRP to show he has managed to achieve something as the NEDA chair,” Gogoi said, responding to a query on the Assam-Meghalaya border issue.
MPCC chief and Shillong MP Vincent H Pala said, “It is very clear Congress always wanted a boundary commission to go to the villages and meet all the stakeholders and then take a decision unlike like the MDA Government, which signed an agreement after meeting a few people.”
He said the boundary commission was envisaged to engage in an exercise that would take years and not just a few months as the issue is very complex and has to be handled with a lot of care.
Congress leader Ronnie V Lyngdoh said even the members of the regional committees of the interstate border-solving process asked Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma to revisit the MoU.
“This shows that it is not just Congress but a lot of stakeholders who have not been taken into confidence before signing the MoU, the content of which was also not made public,” he said.
