Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, AUGUST 30
Reviving a reconciliatory practice that was discarded years after the Merapani war, a bureaucratic-level meeting between Nagaland and Assam was held here today at the Police Complex in Chumukedima.
The meeting today was an offshoot of the August 21 talks held in Guwahati, between the state’s two chief ministers , TR Zeliang and Tarun Gogoi respectively. In the meeting they had both agreed to “continue with the efforts to resolve the border issues from the chief secretary-level down to the deputy commissioner-level.” Saturday’s meeting , is the second Commissioner-level talks since August 21. The first one was held at the Chief Secretary-level.
The Nagaland officials today were led by Additional Chief Secretary, Toshi Aier while the Commissioner of Upper Assam, Syed Iftikar Hussain and his subordinates represented the Assam government.
Highly placed officials privy to the meeting said that the sole purpose of such inter-state bureaucratic conference was to inject confidence among the people living close to both sides of the border. The ultimate intention was to promote people-to-people contact at the local level, he said.
The next meeting has been scheduled to be held at Jorhat in Assam. The official informed that such meetings would be, from now on, a monthly feature.
It might be mentioned that the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju – during the August 21 meeting – had also underscored the need for people-to-people contact, especially in the affected areas.
“Such efforts would remove misgivings and help to build bridges of understanding between the people living along the inter-state border,” he said.
In the aftermath of the Merapani war, Nagaland and Assam had adopted a similar approach that sought to promote and instill confidence among those living in the inter-state border area through people-to-people contact. This practice was, however, discontinued after some years back then, and has been revived now.
