Assam has boundary disputes with Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. These disputes are embedded in history and memory and the borders are more than just lines on a map. There are border residents who are regularly harassed by the more powerful state – Assam. The last border skirmish between Assam and Mizoram in July 2021 left six Assam Police personnel and one civilian dead. Over 70-80 people were injured. In the recent past border clashes between Nagaland and Assam and Meghalaya and Assam have left people dead with no justice whatsoever delivered after such killings. The last bloody affair where Assam Police shot and killed five villagers of Mukroh in Meghalaya while they were returning from their fields but who the Assam Police accused of stealing timber has remained unresolved. This happened in November 2023. Assam Police are known to be trigger happy and their outposts are right next to the border. It took a while for Meghalaya Police to get its act together and create the outpost at Mukroh. Those who died were very poor villagers and earning members of their families.
The latest predicament for the Meghalaya Government is the border skirmish at Lapangap, not far from Mukroh and which also borders West Karbi Anglong. It took the villagers of Lapangap to come all the way and protest near the State Secretariat for the Government to react. This was an act of despair and frustration because the people living at the borders know they are not important to the powers that be. They are only good as voters. Meghalaya shares a border of 884.9 sq km with Assam and there are 12 disputed sectors between the two states. While Assam has been more serious about resolving border disputes with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram such is not the case with Meghalaya. The reason is that the cases with Nagaland and Mizoram are pending in the Supreme Court. Meghalaya for some reason prefers dialogue but that hardly has any impact at the borders where Meghalaya residents are regularly harassed. Time has come to take the matter to the Supreme Court for a full and final solution. Some believe that a durable solution would involve a give and take between the two states but that again is politically fraught.
The roots of these disputes lie largely in the reorganisation of the North East after Meghalaya was carved out of Assam in 1972. Meghalaya questioned parts of the boundary based on older customary and historical understandings of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo territories, while Assam relied more on colonial-era administrative maps and later legal boundaries. But this leaves border villagers who face the brunt of the unresolved disputes. For the tribals land is identity and loss of land is loss of identity. Hence any agreement arrived at without local consultation will produce resentment later. Traditional institutions, village councils and civil society should be consulted before any agreement is arrived at. Time is running out. Many elections have been won by promising to resolve the border disputes but they have remained one of the most enduring problems. The MDA Government must show its spine and act urgently by also taking the opposition into its fold on this issue.
