A "Boundary Committee" set up by the Mizoram government has recommended that the states' boundary be decided on the basis of the Inner Line of 1875, a notification which Assam refuses to accept.
According to the 1875 notification, the place where firing took place on July 26 belongs to Mizoram.
Assam, on the other hand, insists that the boundary which was demarcated in 1987, when Mizoram was carved out of Assam as a separate state, be accepted by both the states. The 1987 demarcation was done by the Centre based on another British-era notification issued in 1933 but Mizoram refused to accept it saying its civil society was not consulted while demarcating the boundary with Assam.
Six Assam policemen died and 41 others were injured during a firing between Lailapur in South Assam's Cachar district and Vairengte in Mizoram's Kolasib district on July 26. Both the states claim the land where the gunfight took place between police forces of the two states as their own.
Days before the gunfight, the Mizoram government constituted the Boundary Committee to recommend steps to end the decades-old boundary dispute with Assam.
"Border issues cannot be resolved through the means of force and thus, the matter should be settled through mutual dialogues and deliberations," said a statement issued by Mizoram government after the committee's first meeting on Friday.
The committee, however, approved the actions taken by Mizoram government on the border issue and urged the government to continue taking steps "courageously." "The Boundary Committee intends to protect our land as it was occupied by our forefathers to its utmost ability, and asks the people of Mizoram for their solidarity and support," the statement said.
Case against Assam CM
The recommendation was made on a day Mizoram police registered a case against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and six Assam officers blaming them for the July 26 firing. The case was registered at Vairengte police station in Kolasib district following an FIR lodged by H. Lalchawimawia, the officer-in-charge of Vairengte police station.
The FIR named CM Sarma, Anurag Agarwal, inspector general of police, Devojyoti Mukherjee, deputy inspector general of police, Cachar, Chandrakant Nimbalkar, SP, Cachar, Keerthi Jalli, deputy commissioner, Cachar, Sunnydeo Choudhury, the divisional forest officer of Cachar, Sahab Uddin, OC of Dholai police station in Cachar district and 200 unidentified Assam police personnel. Nimbalkar had received a bullet injury.
The FIR alleged that the Assam police team led by the IGP pushed out a Mizoram police post from the land as per an instruction from CM Sarma. Assam, on the hand, claimed that the firing was started by Mizoram police.
The case was registered two days after Assam registered a murder case against Mizoram police for the firing and killing of its policemen.