Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Wednesday said that he and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah to submit the recommendations of the committees set up to settle border disputes between the two states.
Sangma said that the Meghalaya Cabinet has approved the recommendations of all three regional committees on the subject. He added that the recommendations of the panels in Meghalaya as well as in Assam will be submitted to the Union home ministry on Thursday.
“We will be submitting more or less a common report,” Sangma said, according to PTI. “The government will then move according to the laws.”
In August, both Meghalaya and Assam formed three regional committees each to deal with border disputes in six areas – Tarabari, Gizang, Hahim, Boklapara, Khanapara-Pilangkata and Ratacherra, according to East Mojo.
Sangma on Wednesday said the two states have reached an agreement on villages in border areas, and have taken note of natural boundaries like rivers and forests.
“We have also considered ethnicity as something very important,” Sangma said, according to PTI. “Both the Assam and the Meghalaya governments have felt strongly that any of the state may try to claim an area but if the people living in that area don’t wish to be in a particular state, one cannot force them.”
Territorial disputes between the two states began after Assam was restructured post Independence to form other states, including Meghalaya.
Meghalaya was demarcated in 1972. Assam is the only state with which Meghalaya shares an internal border.
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