The Assam government on Monday said five of its neighbouring states have encroached upon 83,918 hectares of its land.
According to data tabled by parliamentary affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary in the Assembly on the first day of the budget session, the highest amount of land has been encroached upon by Nagaland (59,490 hectares) followed by Arunachal Pradesh (21,343 hectares), Mizoram (1536 hectares), Meghalaya (1524 hectares) and Tripura (25 hectares).
The three districts where the largest amount of encroachment has been taken place are Golaghat (36,294 hectares by Nagaland), Jorhat (18,908 hectares by Nagaland) and Tinsukia (9,269 hectares by Arunachal Pradesh).
Patowary said the government has filed two cases with the Supreme Court to free land encroached by Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. “Both the cases (number 2/1988 and 1/1989) are sub judice,” he said.
The Supreme Court in April this year dismissed another petition on the boundary dispute between Meghalaya and Assam.
Former IFS officer T.H.S. Bonney had filed the petition before the apex court, requesting it to direct the Centre to constitute a time-bound commission to resolve the boundary dispute between the two states.
Patowary said so far the state government has freed 22 hectares of encroached forest land from Arunachal in Lakhimpur district and 1,175 hectares from Nagaland in Karbi Anglong district through eviction drives.
Assam has border conflicts with these five states.
The state government has deployed 82 border outposts (BOP) and 12 fixed pickets, manning them with 21 companies and two platoons of security personnel from Assam police in the border areas.
Patowary said nine border outposts have been have been sanctioned for inter-state border security.
Golaghat, which has the highest number of border outposts (25), will have another five.
Patowary said development work in border areas is going on smoothly.
“From time to time tensions do arise in border areas but they are brought under control with support of district administration, the police and forest department,” he said.
Till February 23, Assam police have registered 17 crime-related cases in areas along the Assam-Nagaland border — five in 2017, three in 2018, eight in 2019 and one in 2020.