SHILLONG, APRIL 11: Chief minister Mukul Sangma has promised to “aggressively” engage the Assam government in solving the vexed border dispute by ensuring the transfer of Block I and Block II areas under Karbi Anglong district of the neighbouring state to Meghalaya.
The chief minister told the Assembly on Thursday that his government was seeking the transfer of the disputed blocks to Meghalaya on the basis of commonality and till such time the transfer takes place, the people living in the two areas will be included in all developmental endeavours of the state.
“There is no denying the fact that people inhabiting a sizeable portion of Block-I and Block-II belong to the same ethnic group as the people inhabiting Meghalaya and, therefore, that area should be transferred to Meghalaya,” he said in reply to a resolution moved by United Democratic Party leader Paul Lyngdoh.
The chief minister, however, reiterated the need to sort out outstanding issues involving both states in a true spirit of friendship and mutual respect
Sangma said the transfer of these areas in 1951 was resented by the inhabitants as there was no common bond in terms of either race or language with the people of the then Mikir Hills district of Assam.
The Assam government had in 1951 carved out two huge chunks (Block-I and Block-II) from the Jowai sub-division of the then United Khasi and Jaintia Hills district and tagged them with the Mikir Hills district Autonomous District (now Karbi Anglong).
The chief minister endorsed the view shared by the then chief ministers of both Assam and Nagaland in 1971 that a comparative population of the Karbis and Jaintias in the two Blocks should be accepted as the guiding criterion in deciding the issue. A solution, he said, could not be arrived at in view of the impossibility of obtaining a comparative study of the demographic structure as obtaining in 1951 or 1961.
Moving the resolution, Paul recommended amending the North East Re-organisation Act, 1971, to facilitate the inclusion of villages under Block-I and Block-II to Meghalaya.
The former student leader was of the view that the boundary dispute between Assam and Meghalaya has three major areas – traditional areas of difference, areas of new encroachment and those areas which area historically were part of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. Block-I and Block-II, he said, were one such areas which were tagged with Assam’s Karbi Anglong district for ‘political expediency’. (By Our Reporter)
i want all Khasi n JAINTIA tribes of block 1 and 2 to include in the states of Meghalaya, and i dnt want My people to be neglected living in those areas in future. PLEASE Have pity on us.