Assam and Nagaland have been in border disputes for over five decades. The conflict between the two neighbouring states is mainly related to land encroachment.
The two states, officially, share a 434 km long border after Nagaland was split up as an independent state in 1963. The border between the states is divided into six sectors- A, B, C, D, E and F comprising of Sivasagar, Golaghat, Jorhat and Karbi Anglong districts of Assam.
However, the state of Nagaland claims that sectors A, B, C and D belongs to Naga inhabitants and they have been allegedly encroaching on vast swathes of lands in these sectors.
According to reports, over 60,000 hectares of land in Assam has been encroached by the Nagas since 1963 and a number of schools, health centres, churches and other facilities have come up in the areas. Violence is used as a means to scare away the occupants after which a well-organized system of occupation begins.
Assam claims that Nagaland has set up three civil subdivisions on its territory. On the contrary, Nagaland is firm in its belief that more tracts under Assam “occupation” belong to Nagaland. The NSCN (IM), incidentally, wants the entire Assam tract south of the Guwahati-Dibrugarh railway track in these four districts in “Greater Nagalim”.
Before independence, in 1925, the British for administrative purpose combined some parts of Naga Hills and a district of Assam and demarcated the border of Nagaland. And, when Nagaland was formed on December 1, 1963, as per the State of Nagaland Act, 1962, the central government declared the border set up in 1925 as the final one.
But, Nagaland started behaving aggressively after the state was formed. The border defined as per 1925 was not acceptable to the Nagas. Nagaland started demanding the re-transfer of 12,882 sq km of Assam to Nagaland, with claims that boundaries had been drawn by incorporating vast areas belonging to them into Assam.
This resulted in a number of clashes in the adjoining border areas. First such clash had happened at Assam’s Kakodonga Reserve Forest in 1965, followed by the clashes of 1968, 1979 and 1985.
The border skirmishes also resulted in the Merapani incident, in which firing took place between Assam Police and Nagaland Armed Police for 3 days in the month of June 1985. The incident resulted in the death of 100 people out of which 41 deaths were from the Assam side including 28 police personnel.
In August 2014, armed men from Nagaland shot one man from Assam and torched about 200 houses in seven villages. The incident resulted in the death of of18 people and left thousands without homes in unsanitary relief camps.
This age-old dispute has given rise to violent conflicts, leading to mass killings and displacement and remains a constant issue of concern, most of which are carried out by the extremist National Socialist Council of Nagaland. The local issue has attained big dimension as it suspected that militant outfits have taken advantage of the situation and politicized the issue.
The Centre took a number of steps to settle the dispute, but all were in vain.
The Central Government constituted the Sundaram Committee in 1971 after clashes and encroachments in 1969 and 1970. The Committee refuted each and every claim of Nagaland as unsustainable on the basis of fact and historical evidence.
However, Nagaland rejected the report terming it as one based on a misreading of facts and also suffering from bias. Nagaland desired that the entire matter be examined objectively on the basis of historical, geographical, ethnic, linguistic and administrative considerations.
One more commission viz. Shastri Panel (1985) also failed to resolve the dispute
The two states, however, signed 4 interim agreements at Sundaram’s instance in 1972 to maintain status quo.
With the conflict not resolving any time soon, the Assam Government also approached the doors of the Supreme Court. However, it was of no avail.
The top court despite forming local committees and appointing meditators was not successful in solving the dispute.
The two states have also held a series of meetings at various levels, including that of the chief ministers. But these talks have not led to any solution to date.
Thus, it is evident that the border issue between the two states is a complex issue which needs concentrated initiative from both the Central and the State governments.
At the same time, both the states must put a stop to their chauvinistic tendency of using the circumstances on the border as per their convenience and adapt a dedicated approach for a long-term solution to the border crisis in order to narrow the widening gulf between the Assamese and the Nagas.
