Guwahati: The Assam-Meghalaya Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on boundary dispute cannot be executed until February 6 next year, the High Court of Meghalaya has ordered.
The MoU was signed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah on March 29 in New Delhi to resolve the dispute in six of the 12 friction points.
The two states had adopted the 50:50 template wherein half of the disputed land went to Meghalaya and the other half to Assam. However, the agreement was opposed by many of the affected villagers in Meghalaya staging a series of protests. They as well as various organisations in the state had appealed to the Sangma government to revisit the MoU but it stuck to its guns.
It was in light of this that four “traditional heads” of the Khasi Syiemship and Sirdarship had moved the court seeking stay of the MoU’s operation.
P Sharma, the petitioners’ counsel, submitted before the court that if the demarcation of the land is affected physically and boundary marks are placed pursuant to the MoU, the entire writ petition will be rendered infructuous and the petitioners will be without any remedy.
However, Advocate General A Kumar argued that no interim orders are called for at this stage for reasons that the locus of the petitioners has not been established and no irreparable loss would be caused to them in the event the MoU is carried forward.
After hearing both sides, a single judge bench of Justice HS Thangkhiew said, “…it appears that an objection in the form of an affidavit is necessary to be filed to enable this Court to consider the interim prayer as prayed by the applicants/petitioners. The learned AG is accordingly permitted to file objections to the interim prayer and to the maintainability of the writ petition.”
Listing the matter on February 6, the court directed that no physical demarcation or erection of boundary posts on the ground should be carried out during the intervening period.
Earlier, the two states had formed three “regional committees” each as they resolved the dispute in the six areas. They have created an equal number of committees as they have now begun a process to resolve the row in the remaining six “complicated” areas.