Meghalaya minister Alexander Laloo Hek on June 26 called on Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Guwahati and urged him to resume chief ministerial level talks to resolve the long-pending boundary dispute between the two neighbouring states.
“I called on Assam CM @himantabiswa today. I requested him to re-start CM level talk to resolve inter-state boundary dispute at the earliest. We discussed on the need to strengthen health infrastructure in NE states,” Hek tweeted, as he tagged the PMO, Union home minister Amit Shah and CMO, Meghalaya in his tweet.
The Assam-Meghalaya boundary issue assumes significance given the fact that the Union home minister Amit Shah is expected to visit Meghalaya during the second week of July.
‘Resolve Assam-Meghalaya boundary issues by 2022’
During his last visit to Shillong on January 23 to chair the 69th plenary session of the North Eastern Council (NEC), Amit Shah had urged all the states in the region to solve their boundary disputes by August 15, 2022, when the country will be celebrating 75 years of its independence.
He had urged all the states to hold discussions, especially with Assam, with which most of the states have boundary issues.
Shah had also assured that inter-state boundary issues between the Northeast states would be resolved soon.
Assam and the neighbouring state have at least 12 areas where there are boundary disputes among themselves and both states have adopted a policy in which one state cannot carry out developmental activities without informing the other.
The dispute has been there since 1972 after Meghalaya was carved out of Assam as a separate state.
Chief ministers of both Assam and Meghalaya have met in the past as also their chief secretaries and consultations were held by the district administrators concerned and the police forces of the two states to resolve the problem.
