AIZAWL — Mizoram and Assam on Friday agreed to continue to promote and maintain peace along their 164.6 km-long border and continue their efforts to solve their decades-old boundary dispute.
The ministerial-level meeting of the two northeastern states was held here after 21 months and was the first meeting after the Zoram People's Movement (ZPM), led by Chief Minister Lalduhoma, came to power in Mizoram last year.
The last ministerial-level meeting was held in November 2022 in Guwahati. However, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Mizoram counterpart Lalduhoma discussed the border dispute in Guwahati on February 9 this year.
After the Friday meeting here, Assam Border Protection and Development Minister Atul Bora, who led his state's delegation, said the discussions were positive and both states were committed to finding a way to amicably resolve the border dispute.
"We have reaffirmed our commitment to maintaining a zero-tolerance policy towards transportation of smuggled areca nuts from neighbouring Myanmar," he told the media.
Mizoram Home Minister K Sapdanga, who headed the state’s delegation, said: "We are very optimistic to resolve the pending border dispute."
Both sides decided to hold the next ministerial-level meeting in Guwahati before March next year and the Deputy Commissioners and Superintendent of Police concerned of both states shall continue to have regular meetings to promote peace and harmony along the borders. Such meetings may be held virtually every month and in person every six months, an official statement said.
Friday’s ministerial-level meeting was the fourth such talks between the two neighbouring states since August 2021.
The Mizoram Home Minister had earlier said that as per the decision of the ministerial-level meeting held in Guwahati in November 2022, the state government has already submitted a list of 62 border villages to the Assam government that are within the Mizoram territory.
Mizoram's Aizawl, Kolasib, and Mamit districts adjoin southern Assam's Cachar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi districts. Amid the long-standing border dispute between the two states, the border area saw its worst-ever violence on July 26, 2021, when the Assam and Mizoram Police exchanged fire in the disputed area near Vairengte village on National Highway 306, leaving six Assam Police personnel dead and many injured.
Mizoram claims that 509 square miles of the reserved forest, notified in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation (BEFR) 1873, falls within its territory. Assam, on the other hand, regarded the border shown on a map prepared by the Survey of India in 1933 as its current boundary.
The border dispute began in 1972 when Mizoram, then one of the districts of Assam, became a Union Territory and the boundary between Assam and Mizoram was vaguely made under the North-East Areas Reorganisation Act, 1971, without any ground demarcation.