Aizawl: A seven-member Mizoram delegation will leave for Guwahati on April 24 to engage in official-level discussion with Assam to resolve the long standing boundary dispute between the two Northeastern states, a senior official of Mizoram home department said on Wednesday.
Home Secretary Vanlalmawia will lead the Mizoram delegation, while a principal secretary or secretary from the neighbouring state’s Border Protection and Development Department will likely lead the Assam delegation, he said.
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He said that officials will hold the upcoming meeting in Guwahati on April 25.
The senior official said that the upcoming meeting will mainly center on preparing and finalising the groundwork and modalities for the next round of ministerial-level talks.
“However, they will also address the technicalities and nitty-gritty of the border issue, as ministers cannot discuss all border-related subjects, including technical details, during the talks,” he said.
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He said officials might need to convene discussions more than once before the next round of ministerial-level talks. The authorities held the last and fourth round of ministerial-level talks in Aizawl on August 9 last year.
In the talks, which were attended by Mizoram’s home minister K. Sapdanga and Assam’s Border Protection and Development Minister Atul Bora, both delegations agreed to continue to observe conditions agreed in the previous parleys, including maintaining peace along the inter-state border.
The two states had also agreed to hold the next round of ministerial-level meetings in Guwahati before March 31 this year, which, however, did not happen.
Meanwhile, K. Sapdanga chaired a meeting of the state boundary committee to review the forthcoming official-level meeting. The meeting discussed the state’s stance and the report of the four-member study group on the state’s boundary, formed on January 25, 2024.
The team also reviewed the necessary documents to table at the upcoming talks.
Sapdanga informed the meeting that the government’s top priority is to ensure that the state’s border is secure so that people can live in peace. He said that massive efforts are being made to ensure that Mizoram does not lose its territory.
Minister B. Lalchhanzova, adviser to the chief minister (Political) Lalmuanpuia Punte, chief secretary in-charge H. Lalengmawia, representatives of political parties and NGOs, border experts, and home department officials, attended the meeting.
Three Mizoram districts- Aizawl, Kolasib, and Mamit share a 164.6 km long border with Assam’s Cachar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi districts. The decades-old border dispute mainly stemmed from two conflicting colonial-era demarcations- one from 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation (BEFR) and another from 1933.
Mizoram claims that 509 square miles of the Inner Line Reserved Forest (ILRF) delineated in 1875 under the BEFR as its legitimate area or boundary. In contrast, Assam asserts the border defined by a 1933 map prepared by the Survey of India 1933 as its constitutional boundary.
As a result, both states lay claim to overlapping areas, with no ground demarcation conducted till date.
The dispute escalated into violence on several occasions, and on July 26, 2021, near Mizoram’s Vairengte village, a clash between police forces of both states resulted in seven fatalities and numerous injuries.
Since August 2021, both states have held four rounds of ministerial-level talks, besides negotiations and virtual meetings at official and border district administrations levels to resolve the decades-old border dispute.