Amit Shah in Arunachal Pradesh: Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border dispute to be resolved by next year, says Home Minister
Amit Shah in Arunachal Pradesh: Union Home Minister on Saturday ascertained that the inter-state boundary dispute between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh will be resolved by next year.
Mr. Shah said that efforts are underway to eliminate the northeast insurgency, claiming that 9,000 militants from the region have surrendered during the last eight years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.
He stated that the governments of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam were striving to resolve the inter-state border conflict amicably and permanently.
“Youths of Northeast no longer carry guns and petrol bombs. They are now carrying laptops and are launching startups. This is the path of development that the Centre has envisaged for the region,” PTI quoted Amit Shah’s statement.
Border issue between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh shares an 804-kilometer border with Assam. Though there was no conflict at first, allegations of inhabitants of one state encroaching on the land of the other have led to disagreements and violence throughout the years. The suit on this subject has been pending in the Supreme Court since 1989.
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and Shah’s persuasion, both states agreed to settle their border dispute through negotiations last year.
The two states’ border dispute began in 1873, when the British implemented the inner-line regulation, which established an imaginary boundary between the plains and hills territories north of Assam.
People from outside Arunachal Pradesh must obtain licences before entering the state, according to an inner-line regulation that still persists.
North-East Frontier Tracts and later North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) were the names given to the area that was ‘separated’ from Assam. Following independence, it fell under the administrative jurisdiction of Assam.
NEFA was renamed Arunachal Pradesh in 1972 and given union territory status, before becoming a full-fledged state in 1987.
However, before it got its current limits, a committee led by former Assam chief minister Gopinath Bordoloi transferred to Assam roughly 3650 sq km of land that had previously belonged to NEFA.
This transfer, which was made without consulting the people or the NEFA government, is the main point of contention between the two states, as Arunachal Pradesh does not recognise it.
In the presence of federal home minister Amit Shah, the chief ministers of Assam and Meghalaya signed a pact in New Delhi last month to resolve 6 of the 12 issues of contention along their border.
Home Minister Amit Shah on a two-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh
During his two-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, Amit Shah paid a visit at the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram in Narottam Nagar, Tirap district.
Along with Union Home Minister Shah, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju paid a visit to the Ashram.
Mr. Shah will attend public events, inaugurate various development projects, and interact with personnel from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), the Central Armed Police Forces under the ministry of home affairs, who are deployed in the region to guard the border and maintain the country’s internal security.
