Units of the Garoland State Movement Committee visited Siminaguri and Malchapara (Malangkona area) to visit the disputed border areas yesterday and were scathing of the agreement to resolve the dispute signed by Meghalaya and Assam.
“The chief ministers of the two states, Meghalaya and Assam, have goofed up by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) without the consent of the residents,” the GSMC said in a press release today. “We met and asked the residents to prove whether the land documents they have are from Assam or Meghalaya and asked them to show the government-built infrastructure and institutions. After visiting the areas and collecting more documents, we have proved that the total of 36.72 square km of land is originally Meghalaya but now it’s divided into 18 square km for each state.”
Schools, police outposts and other government infrastructure are all Meghalayan in these areas, the GSMC added, so these places should not go to Assam. Furthermore, the pressure group said that the state government said that the people’s will be the driving force in the border agreement but this has proved not to be the case.
According to it, “95 percent” of the residents want to stay with Meghalaya and “they have been demanding to revoke the MoU.”
