The people living in the disputed border areas between Meghalaya and Assam will not stomach the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the two states as it stands, the Hynniewtrep Border Dispute Redressal Forum (HBDRF) said today, calling for the state government to revisit the deal.
“Some houses fall under the boundary of Meghalaya while their fishponds, farmlands, etc go to Assam (under the agreement), which will create a huge problem in future since the system of land holding in the two states differs,” spokesperson of the HBDRF, Thomas Passah, told reporters today.
He said that it is not an easy thing for people who have valid documents concerning their land to accept the statement made by Chief Minister Conrad Sangma that the MoU cannot be revisited.
Passah also questioned the CM for saying that all regional parties had been informed of the details of the agreement before it was signed; regional parties that are allies of the CM’s National People’s Party have not shied away from criticising aspects of the MoU.
Passah, himself a youth leader in the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) party, pointed out that the Chief Minister declined to even present the full deal in the Assembly, instead preferring only to give a summary of it.
“What was the purpose of forming the regional boundary committees if the deal was based on the list of villages included in 2011?” he further questioned. The CM has taken to blaming his predecessor for excluding several villages in a list prepared by Meghalaya in 2011 during negotiations with Assam.
“This also means that the regional border committees were constituted only to fool the people and waste public money because if the reports have been submitted by the committee then what is the need to go back to 2011?” Passah said, adding that the forum had inspected and studied the disputed areas for many years and the MoU is full of anomalies and is unacceptable.
The mess that has been made, Passah said, with this first phase of border talks augurs badly for the second, more complicated phase that will begin later in the year.
