The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Meghalaya High Court order that had stopped the implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed by the chief ministers of Assam and Meghalaya for settling the boundary dispute between the two states.

A bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice J.B. Pardiwala stayed the December 8 order of a single-judge bench of Meghalaya High Court on a request for urgent hearing by solicitor-general Tushar Mehta appearing for the Meghalaya government.

The CJI, however, assured advocate Pragyan Pradip Sharma, one of the PIL petitioners from Meghalaya, that the question of whether the two states can enter into an MoU on the border row issue without the concurrence of Parliament would be examined at a later stage.

As an interim measure, the bench said it was staying the high court order and issued notices to the four private respondents on whose petitions the high court had passed the impugned order.

“Prima facie, the single judge has not furnished any reason for the interim order. Whether the MoU will require parliamentary approval is a distinct issue.

“We feel the interim order staying the MoU was not warranted. Thus the interim order of the single judges is hereby stayed, till further orders,” the bench said.

Mehta told the bench that the high court had passed the order on the basis of PILs filed by four persons challenging the MoU between Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counter part Conard Sangma on March 29 last year.

He clarified that the MoU did not deal with the actual distribution of the boundaries but only the demarcation of the stated positions for effective distribution of welfare benefits.

Assam government’s counsel Shuvodeep Roy told the bench that the state was not heard by the high court while passing the interim order.

He clarified that the existing boundaries between the two states had only been recognised and not altered or changed in any manner.

However, advocate Sharma, appearing for one of the PIL petitioners in the high court, said the MoU was illegal and the high court had rightly stayed it. He argued that under Article 3 of the Constitution, demarcation of state boundaries could be done only with the consent of Parliament. But in the present case, Sharma said, the two chief ministers entered into the MoU without any parliamentary consent.

He said this had led to clashes and unrest in Meghalaya as the locals felt many of their tribal villages had been transferred to Assam’s non-tribal region.

Sharma also urged the apex court to deal with the constitutionality of the MoU and hoped the solicitor-general Mehta and the Centre should have no objection to the matter being dealt with by the Supreme Court.

Mehta said he had no objection. The court later adjourned the matter for two weeks.