Guwahati: More than 82,750 hectares of Assam’s land remains under the encroachment of four neighbouring northeastern states, the Assam govt informed the assembly on Wednesday. The disputed area is larger than the size of several UTs, including that of Chandigarh.Replying in the House to a question by Congress MLA Wazed Ali Choudhury, state border protection and development minister Atul Bora said that while the govt is continuing efforts to resolve the long-pending boundary disputes with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram at the earliest, he solely blamed the previous Congress-led govts as the creator of the inter-state border problems.“The neighbouring states that we see today — be it Nagaland or Arunachal Pradesh — were created when the Congress was in power at the Centre and the state. I met a person from Arunachal Pradesh a few years ago who told me that when he was born, he was in Assam, but today he is in Arunachal Pradesh. So, when these states were created, they should have settled the boundaries once and for all. Had that been done properly, the situation would have been different. Then people living in border areas would not have had to face frequent disputes over minor issues, and many would not have had to lose their lives because of such conflicts,” Bora said.But he said Congress, driven only by political interests, never resolved this issue. “Today, the CM has invited his counterparts from the neighbouring states, and the CMs of those states have agreed that the issues should be resolved through dialogue and discussions,” Bora added.The provided data stated that Nagaland has encroached on the highest amount of land, totalling 59,490.21 hectares. This is followed by Arunachal Pradesh, which accounts for 16,144.0117 hectares of encroached area. Additionally, the data tabled in the House stated that Mizoram and Meghalaya have encroached on 3,675.78 hectares and 3,441.8601 hectares of Assam’s land, respectively.Citing the information received from the headquarters of the border wing of Assam Police, the minister said that for securing Assam’s borders, currently, out of 103 BOPs, 96 BOPs are active at the inter-state borders. He said that the department of border protection and development has made arrangements to provide grants-in-aid of Rs 5 lakh per year sequentially for the infrastructure development and maintenance of BOPs from the 2022-23 financial year.
