Meghalaya for all-party effort on border row with Assam

SHILLONG - Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma Thursday urged all political parties to join hands with the state government in submitting a joint petition to the central government for urgent and speedy solution to the boundary dispute with Assam.

“Let us take this as a common objective to resolve the decades-long boundary dispute with Assam,” Sangma told legislators in the assembly.

The chief minister, while replying to a number of resolutions on the boundary dispute raised by legislators from treasury and opposition benches, said that his government was determined to resolve the issue once and for all.

“This is not my objective, but objective of the people of the state who had incurred innumerable sufferings,” he said.

Four people were killed and several injured in the firing by Assam Police personnel at Langpih village May 14, after a clash between tribal Khasis and Garos with Nepali nationals at a weekly market.

Langpih, about 60 km from Guwahati in Assam and 140 km from Shillong, has been claimed by both Assam and Meghalaya as part of their territory.

Meghalaya has 12 areas of difference with Assam.

Sangma is scheduled to meet Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi in Guwahati Saturday to find ways to resolve the long-pending boundary disputes.

According to Sangma, the boundary dispute with Assam is no longer an issue between Assam and Meghalaya, but a national issue which has even taken an international dimension when it figured in the Nepalese press and the Nepal embassy took it up.

Earlier, legislators cutting across party lines urged the government to resolve once and for all the issue that is being taken up with the central government.