Assam accuses Nagaland of encroaching into its territory

Guwahati, July 14 (UNI): Assam government today accused Nagaland government of working at the behest of Naga insurgents while encroaching into Assam’s territory. The comment came from Assam Border Area Development minister Gautam Roy who minced no words in giving the reply that actual reason behind continued encroachment was the creation of “Greater Nagalim.”

Replying to a question of Abdul Aziz of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), he said, since the creation of Nagaland in 1962, the state was consistently refusing to accede to the boundaries demarcated by the Indian constitution. Roy informed that Nagaland has encroached 66,241 hectare of land of Assam. He also informed that steps were initiated to stop fresh attempt of encirclements.

Assam’s constitutional boundary had very clearly been demarcated but just in the name of history and tradition all the four sates, namely Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram are illegally occupying Assam’s land. This was the official stand of the Assam government and the Roy also fully endorsed it. In fact Assam government had filed a case in the Supreme Court against Nagaland in 1988 and the final judgment was still awaited.

Assam-Nagaland inter-state boundary, of 438 kilometer witnesses fierce skirmishes between the two police forces for the past few decades. 

There are ten reserve forests in the boundary stretching in Golaghat, Jorhat and Sibsagar districts. In the wake of the report of the States Reorganization Commission in 1955, different ethnic groups in the then undivided, composite states of Assam started asserting their distinct identities to demand their own state in the North East.

It was under the leadership of AZ Phizo, the first voice was raised for the creation of separate entity for the Nagas. But by the time the Commission submitted its report, Phizo had started his armed rebellion. In September 1963, the Naga hills District was carved out of Assam and made a separate state. This was the beginning of a process of the Assam hill tribes’ movement for creating separate tribal states. In 1971, the United Khasi Jaintia hills district and the Garo hills district were made a sub state within Assam. A year later, on January 21, 1972, the sub state became the full fledged state of Meghalaya.

At the same time, the Mizo hills district which had, for all practical purposes, been under Army control since February 1966, armed uprising by the MNF, became first a Union Territory and then, in 1987, the separate state of Mizoram. In the North, the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) became a Union Territory and subsequently a full fledged state in 1987. Only two hills districts North Cachar and Karbi Anglong opted to remain in Assam.