ASSAM - ARUNACHAL PRADESH BORDER DISPUTE – POLITY
News: Assam,
Arunachal Pradesh ink MoU ending decades-long border dispute in presence of
Amit Shah
What's in the news?
● Assam
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Arunachal Pradesh counterpart Pema
Khandu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) over the long-standing border
dispute between the two states, a development Home Minister Amit Shah described
as a “historic occasion”.
Border dispute:
● The
two states share a roughly 800kilometre long
border and the disputed areas the MoU deals with are 123 border villages,
which span 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh and 8 districts of Assam.
Roots of border disputes:
● Before
North East Frontier Agency or NEFA (former name of what is now Arunachal
Pradesh) was carved out of Assam in
1954, a sub-committee headed by then Assam Chief Minister Gopinath Bordoloi had made a set of
recommendations in relation to the administration of NEFA and submitted a
report in 1951.
● In
line with the recommendations of this report, around 3,648 kilometres of the
“plain” area of Balipara and Sadiya foothills were transferred from NEFA to
Assam’s then Darrang and Lakhimpur districts.
● When
Arunachal was made a Union Territory in
1972, it contended that several forested tracts in the plains that had
traditionally belonged to hill tribal chiefs and communities were unilaterally
transferred to Assam.
Go back to basics:
● Earlier
in March 2022, Assam and Meghalaya
governments had signed a historic agreement in the national capital to resolve
their 50-year-old pending border dispute.
● The
agreement was signed between Assam and Meghalaya two months after a draft
resolution was submitted by the Chief Ministers of the two states to Amit Shah
on January 31 for examination and consideration by the MHA.
● The
governments of Assam and Meghalaya had come up with a draft resolution to
resolve their border disputes in six of the 12 "areas of difference"
along the boundary.