Guwahati, April 20: Assam and Arunachal Pradesh signed a historic MoU (memorandum of understanding) in New Delhi on Thursday to finally end a festering five decades-old inter-state boundary row.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu signed the border pact in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah at the Ministry of Home Affairs located at North Block.
The disputes have been resolved on the basis of the local commission’s report in 2007 that had identified boundary issues in 123 villages.
“Both the states agree that no new claim area and village shall be added beyond already claimed 123 villages. Also, both the state governments agree to effectively prevent any new encroachment in the border areas,” read a clause of the MoU.
Notably, the two states share a border across 804 km, spreading over eight Assam districts and 12 Arunachal Pradesh districts.
Speaking on the occasion, Union home minister Amit Shah termed the signing of the border MoU as a red letter day for both Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
Shah exuded optimism that the boundary settlement would usher in all-round development and peace in the Northeast.
“We have become witness to a historic moment today. A dispute, across a border spreading up to 800 km, that could not be resolved since 1972, has finally been resolved. The two states have agreed to abide by the reports of the local commission which were not accepted at different levels previously. So, this is indeed a significant achievement, for which I congratulate the people of the two states, both the chief ministers and Union minister Kiren Rijiju.”
Listing the peace pacts in the region signed since 2014 when the Modi government took over, Shah said, “Today, we have crossed a milestone towards achieving Modiji’s dream of a developed, peaceful and dispute-free Northeast. Various peace accords, be it the agreement with NLFT in 2019, Bru pact in 2020, the agreements with Bodo, Karbi and Adivasi militant groups or the border dispute resolution process with Meghalaya, have been signed over the years.”
“As a result, over 8000 youths in the Northeast have shunned weapons and returned to the mainstream, thereby paving the way for overall development in the region. Since the Modi government took over in 2014, violence in the Northeast has reduced by 66 percent; death rate of security forces has come down by 60 percent while the death rate of citizens has dropped by 83 percent,” the home minister said.
The Assam Cabinet had on Wednesday approved the recommendations given by 12 regional committees formed by the state government to resolve the decades-long border row with Arunachal Pradesh.
Union minister Kiren Rijiju, Assam ministers Atul Bora, Jayanta Malla Baruah, Keshab Mahanta, Bimal Borah and Sanjay Kishan; Assam chief secretary, Paban Kumar Borthakur and senior officials of the home ministry and Assam government were present on the occasion.
Thanking the people of the two states, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the historic MoU will usher in permanent peace in the border villages of the two states.
“The border dispute has been solved in almost all the 123 villages, barring one or two, where the boundary will have to be ascertained in accordance with the Survey of India’s recommendations. I also thank the Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu for the goodwill gesture to leave a land space in Jorhat for the Assam government in accordance with the border agreement,” Sarma said.
Assam-Meghalaya border issues
In March last year, the Assam and Meghalaya governments had signed a historic agreement in the national capital to resolve their 50-year-old pending border dispute in six of the 12 “areas of difference”.
The agreement was signed two months after a draft resolution was submitted by the chief ministers of the two states to the Union home minister on January 31, 2022, for examination and consideration by the home ministry.
On the next course of border resolution with Meghalaya, Sarma said that within two-three months, the Assam government and the Meghalaya government would try to resolve the differences in the remaining border areas.
“About 60 percent of the border dispute with Meghalaya has been resolved till date, and within the next two to three months, we will try to resolve the disputes in the remaining 40 percent area,” the Assam chief minister said.
Earlier, in his address, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu termed the settlement of boundary between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh as momentous and historic and exuded optimism that it would bring about a sea change on the peace and development front.
Notably, since last year, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have held a series of chief ministerial-level talks on the decades-long inter-state boundary row and deliberated on the progress made by the regional committees of the two states that were constituted under the Namsai Declaration.
It may be mentioned that regional committees from both states had initiated the process of visits to the “points of differences” along the interstate boundary from August 2022, subsequent to the Namsai Declaration which was inked in mid-July last year.
Under the Namsai Declaration, both the states have agreed to constitute 12 regional committees, each covering the 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh and the counterpart districts of Assam for joint verification of villages and thereafter make recommendations to the respective state governments.
During the third round of chief minister-level inter-state boundary talks at Namsai, the two states had mutually agreed in principle that issues in 37 of the 123 “disputed” villages were more or less resolved.”