The Assam-Meghalaya border firing

• A bid by the Assam police and forest personnel to catch alleged timber smugglers from Meghalaya led to the killing of six people at a place claimed by each State to be within its territory .
• Heightening tensions along a stretch of the interstate boundary has led to a delay in the process of resolving the Assam-Meghalaya boundary dispute.

What led to the firing?

• Assam government has insisted the incident had nothing to do with the boundary dispute and was the fallout of its crusade against the smuggling of timber.
• National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), attributed the firing to the border dispute, “a larger issue pending for long”.
• Had the dispute been settled, such type of incidents would have been averted.

What was the immediate fallout?

• What seemed to be a local incident from far became fodder for pressure groups in poll-bound Meghalaya to rail against the government for failing to protect border residents.
• Stray cases of arson, vandalisation of Assam-registered vehicles, and attacks on security personnel and civilians marked the protests in Shillong.
• Assam-based taxi operators also prevented Meghalaya-registered vehicles to enter the State.
• Tourism in Meghalaya was hit hard in a year many tourists cancelling their trips.
• The incident also delayed the process of resolving the boundary dispute between the two States in the remaining six of the 12 sectors.

How is the boundary dispute linked to the incident?

• Although the Assam government claims to the contrary, the fact that the two governments refer to the place of the incident by two names makes it apparent that the boundary dispute is intertwined.
• While Meghalaya says the place is Mukroh in West Jaintia Hills District, Assam claims it is Mukhrow or Moikrang in West Karbi Anglong district.
• The village is also very close to Block 1, one of the six dispute sectors that remain to be resolved.

How did the boundary dispute start?

• Meghalaya, carved out of Assam as an autonomous State in 1970, became a full-fledged State in 1972.
• The creation of the new State was based on the Assam Reorganisation (Meghalaya) Act of 1969, which the Meghalaya government refused to accept.
• This was because the Act followed the recommendations of a 1951 committee to define the boundary of Meghalaya.
• On that panel’s recommendations, areas of the present-day East Jaintia Hills, Ri-Bhoi and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya were transferred to the Karbi Anglong, Kamrup (metro) and Kamrup districts of Assam.
• Meghalaya claims that they belonged to its tribal chieftains.
• Assam said the Meghalaya government could neither provide documents nor archival materials to prove its claim over these areas.

Conclusion

• After claims and counter-claims, the dispute was narrowed down to 12 sectors on the basis of an official claim by Meghalaya in 2011.