‘Don’t have any Mizos living in 62 villages’: Assam to Mizoram

The Assam Government has also sought Mizoram’s date for the next round of talks on boundary issues.

Responding to a query sent by Mizoram last February, the Government of Assam has maintained that 62 villages situated along the disputed border areas claimed by the Mizoram government do not have any Mizos inhabiting in the villages.

As per Assam officials, the state government has sent the list to the respective district commissioners in the Barak Valley. After field verification, the three district commissioners of the Barak Valley informed Dispur that the villages that the Mizoram government claimed as theirs have no Mizo habitation.

The Assam Government has also sought Mizoram’s date for the next round of talks on boundary issues.

In its reply letter, the Mizoram government said that they prefer to sit for boundary issues with Assam after the Lok Sabha election.

A senior official of the Mizoram home department, on the condition of anonymity, said that Mizoram government never claimed that the 62 villages are inhabited by Mizos.

He said that a notification issued in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873 by the Governor-in-Council said that the inner line was the international boundary between Cachar and the Lushai country.

He said that Mizoram claimed the 62 villages not because the villages are inhabited by Mizo population, but the area in which the villages situated was within Lushai country (now Mizoram) in accordance with the 1875 notification.

No human settlements would be there in 1875, as the area under which the 62 villages fall, was declared as the Inner Line Forest Reserve by the British government, he said. “We know that there are no Assamese settlers there and the present settlers must be illegal immigrants from the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh),” he said.

Inhabitants of the area claimed by Mizoram should be declared as illegal settlers, who encroached on inner line reserve forest, he said.

He also reiterated the desire of the state home department that the detailed nitty-gritties should first be deliberated by the two neighbouring states in official level talks before involving ministers of the two states.

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