O Joy, the spokesperson of the Manipur unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, on Saturday said the Joint Border Commission has violated the India-Myanmar boundary agreement signed in Yangon in 1967 by erecting a pillar at the wrong location. The commission was set up to demarcate the India-Myanmar border.
Joy claimed that as per the agreement, pillar number 81 (earlier pillar number 18) was supposed to be erected on the right bank of the Manjet Lok river, which is towards the side of Myanmar. “Unfortunately, it has been erected on the left side of the bank,” he said, according to Imphal Free Press.
Pillar number 81, installed in Manipur’s Tengnoupal village, has caused a furore in the state. Tengnoupal District Commissioner Abujam Tombikanta Singh said in June that the pillar stood “at least three kilometres” inside Indian territory. He was in the area inspecting the subsidiary border pillars recently built under the aegis of a joint survey team from India and Myanmar.
The subsidiary pillars were erected as supplementary markers of the border because the original numbered pillars stood far apart from each other. “The subsidiary border pillars were decided to be erected so that there is less ambiguity about the border as the original border pillars are at least three km from each other,” an official said.
But the district commissioner reportedly claimed the original border pillar 81 had also been moved from its position and that, as a result, Manipur risked losing land. “We also need to look up at our history as reference, in the true meaning of entire traditional boundary,” he said.
During the border demarcation exercise of 1894, the boundary commission had decided the longitudes and latitudes for the boundary. “Why were the longitudes and latitudes not used by the joint border commission during the 1967 demarcation?” Joy asked. “What is the hidden agenda behind [this]?”
Joy said that he had met Governor Chura Chand Singh on Friday regarding the matter. Joy said Singh assured him he would take up the matter with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. The External Affairs Ministry had released a statement on July 8 calling reports of a border dispute with Myanmar “baseless and unsubstantiated”.
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