Chairman of the Regional Committee for West Khasi Hills Paul Lyngdoh on Friday informed that the regional committees of both Assam and Meghalaya will be meeting in Shillong on August 28.
Addressing media persons, Lyngdoh said, “Chairman in-charge of Kamrup district sector Chandra Mohan Patowary is visiting Shillong on Monday along with his team of officials from the government of Assam. We expect that this meeting to be fruitful and to also steer us closer to the resolution of the problems within that sector.”
He said, “As per the discussions that we have had last in Guwahati, this would be the second meeting which will pave the way for the final meeting which will be an onsite inspection in few villages within the Langpih sector of West Khasi Hills.”
He said after the joint visit, the regional committees of the two states will be in a position to submit the final reports to their respective chief ministers within the year end.
“Our target date is November. So let us keep it for a year end for the submission of the report to the respective chief ministers,” he said.
Lyngdoh informed that this is a very important development and from Meghalaya side, they have prepared a very substantive report on various claims made by the State in regards to the Langpih sector.
“We have now documented them properly and we expect that in the spirit of reconciliation and accommodation the meeting will take us closer to the final resolution of the boundary problems that we have had in the Langpih sector for the past several decades,” he said.
Lyngdoh said there are various parameters which includes the ethnicity, contiguity, willingness of the people, history of the area, which government has been implementing developmental activities in such villages, then electoral roll, when have these people voted where have they voted, all those issues are being taken into consideration.
He said that the first approach will be to first resolve matters relating to big clusters of villages because few villages which are dominated by non-Khasis, non-Garos are small in number.
“So we will look at the bigger picture confined to the problem free areas first and these will go on the basis of contiguity for instance,” he said.
When asked, he said there are over 200 villages under Langpih sector but the problem areas are roughly 54. “In a few cases, at least 7-8 such villages have also expressed their willingness to be with Assam but majority of these 54 villages would like to stay with Meghalaya,” he added.