Namsai Declaration is a landmark decision to keep the NE region United: Assam CM

A day after the signing of the historic ‘Namsai Declaration’ to ease border tensions with Arunachal Pradesh, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that it was a landmark meeting from the point of view of creating a united northeast.

“After Meghalaya, yesterday was a historic day as we have been able to instill confidence in the minds of people that the Assam-Arunachal dispute will be resolved“, Sarma said, recalling the “very fruitful discussion” with his Arunachal counterpart Pema Khandu yesterday.

It needs mention here that Chief Ministers of Assam and Meghalaya signed an agreement on March 29 to resolve border issues in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah.

Assam and Arunachal Pradesh yesterday agreed to restrict the number of contested villages to 86 instead of 123.
While Arunachal Pradesh will retain the 28 villages within its constitutional boundary, the state has withdrawn its claim over three villages in Assam.

Sarma said the 28 villages are “clearly within the constitutional territory of Arunchal Pradesh.”

Six other villages which could not be located on the Assam side would also remain with the frontier state if they exist in Arunachal Pradesh, said an official release.

“We could not even find out the names of the (six) villages. We tried to find these villages for 3 months of if they have an Assamese name,” said the Chief Minister.

Khandu in a tweet yesterday said: “Based on our present boundary, we'll try to resolve the rest by September 15, 2022.”

Khandu and Biswa Sarma had met on January 24, and again on April 20 during which it was decided that all border issues between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh will be confined to those raised before the Local Commission in 2007.

Both the States constituted 12 Regional Committees each covering the 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh and the corresponding districts of Assam for joint verification of 123 villages and thereafter to make recommendations to respective state governments keeping in view the historical perspective, administrative convenience, contiguity and people's will to delineate the interstate boundary between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

These regional committees would submit their first tranche of the report on the areas or any other areas where consensus has arrived, before September 15.

"As and when the regional committees will conclude their deliberations and agreement is arrived at between the two governments, the draft MoU will be referred to the union government for its approval," the Namsai Declaration stated.