Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma will conduct meetings on September 19 to find a peaceful solution to the boundary conflict between Assam and Mizoram. The CMO officer, who is accompanying Zoramthanga in New Delhi, stated that meeting will take place in the national capital, but the location has yet to be determined.
“The two chief ministers conversed over the phone on Friday and decided to hold a meeting on the border issue on September 19 in New Delhi,” an official told a reporter.
They had already met on the subject in November of last year in New Delhi, in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. In a previous telephonic chat on August 10 this year, the two Chief Ministers had planned to hold the talks in the later part of August or early September.
Three districts of Mizoram — Aizawl, Kolasib, and Mamit — share a 164.6-km-long border with three districts of Assam: Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj. The long-standing border dispute between the two neighbouring States comes from two colonial demarcations of 1875 and 1933.
Mizoram argues that a 509 square mile stretch of inner line reserved forest proclaimed in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation (BEFR) 1873, a certain piece of which presently falls in Assam, is the actual boundary of the State.
Assam, on the other hand, claims that the line shown on the map of the Survey of India in 1933 represents the State’s constitutional boundary. Certain territories that are presently in Mizoram are part of the 1933 demarcation.
On July 26, last year, police forces from Mizoram and Assam engaged in a gunfight, resulting in the deaths of seven persons, including six Assam police officers, and the injuries of around 60 people.
Following the violent incident, both states’ delegates met at the ministerial level on August 5, last year, and determined to maintain peace along the inter-State boundary and resolve the problem through conversation.
So far, the delegations have met in Aizawl twice and virtually three times. Both delegates agreed to keep the peace and take the appropriate precautions near the border during their most recent meeting on August 9. They also agreed to meet again next month in Guwahati.
Last week, the Mizoram State Boundary Committee unanimously approved a “Approach Paper” to be filed as the government’s position on the boundary in the next round of discussions.