Gogoi slams Assam, Meghalaya CMs for signing MoU without people’s consent

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJanuary 18, 2023

Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi on Tuesday slammed the Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Meghalaya chief minister Conrad K Sangma for signing the border agreement without taking the people into confidence.

Addressing media persons, Gogoi said, “It (border issue) cannot be decided by two chief ministers sitting in private rooms because the affected people are living in those areas and they have to be taken into confidence. It is not their personal, they are not talking about the boundary between their homes, it is the boundary of two states and I think it is quite arrogant of them to think without taking the people on the ground into confidence. Just by mere sitting in some private rooms somewhere in Delhi or in Taj Vivanta in Guwahati that they can just alter the boundaries as they feel.”

He also said that it was highly unfortunate when the two chief ministers were signing agreements, there were conflicts and shootings on the border.

“It is the failure of both governments and both the chief ministers and it shows how the signing was just a photoshop as there are much more serious issues to be resolved. But unfortunately in today’s era, chief ministers  and our prime minister have started this politics of photoshop.”

Gogoi also accused the Assam chief minister of arm-twisting his neighbouring chief ministers for the sake of getting “TRP”.

“Our Assam chief minister craves TRP and if his name does not come out in the newspaper regularly, he feel kind of anxiety and sometimes he may arm twist his neighbouring chief ministers into signing something that they don’t want so that he gets his TRP to show that as NEDA chairman he has managed to achieve something. I don’t know if this applies in this particular case but I hear often that this is the case. Therefore, chief ministers of other states have to be strong and champion their own people and their own land and not be arm twisted by those sitting in Dispute or by those sitting in Delhi or Nagpur,” he said.

Meanwhile, Congress chief Vincent H Pala said the party has always maintained the need to have a boundary commission to resolve this long pending problem.

“The commission will go to the villages, they will meet the headmen, the secretaries, the Syiems, the Dollois and different people and then make a decision. It is not like what the MDA government is doing, they just met a few supporters and said here is the signing of the agreement. However, the commission we are talking about will do an exercise of 3-4 years and not only 3-4 months,” he said.

He informed that he had also written to the Prime Minister for setting up of the boundary commission to solve the border issue.