“Meghalaya people has not accepted the mandate with Assam” TMC leader

Accused the Meghalaya Government...

Mukul Sangma, leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), has accused the Meghalaya government of signing the border agreement with Assam based on "the dictate" of the neighbouring state.

He claimed Meghalaya’s people have not accepted the accord. “Anything that is not acceptable to the people is not acceptable to us,” he said on Tuesday as he filed his nomination for the February 27 assembly polls.

In March, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart, Conrad Sangma, signed an agreement to settle the five-decade-old dispute in six of the 12 contested areas along the two states' 884.9 km-long border.

In August 2021, each state formed three panels to discuss the border dispute. After two rounds of talks between the states, Sarma and Sangma submitted a draught resolution to Shah on January 31 for consideration by the Union home ministry.

The two sides proposed that Assam keep 18.51 square kilometres while giving Meghalaya 18.28 square kilometres. In the first phase of settlement, an agreement on 36 villages was reached.