Aizawl: The second round of official-level talks between Mizoram and Assam to find an amicable and long-lasting solution to the long-standing border dispute is likely to be held in Aizawl in mid-Nov, Mizoram home minister K Sapdanga said on Sunday.Sapdanga told TOI that the state home department proposed a three-day meeting, not necessarily on consecutive days, to be able to cover the entire technical and administrative modalities. However, the Assam govt’s final response is still awaited, he said.The Mizoram delegation is likely to be headed by the state home secretary Vanlalmawia, while the Assam team may be led by a senior official of the border protection and development department.The last round of official-level border talks was held in Guwahati on April 25 last year. The discussions focused mainly on technical and administrative issues related to Assam and Mizoram’s 164.6-km shared boundary and laid the groundwork for further ministerial-level negotiations.State home department officials said that though it was agreed to hold the next round of talks at the earliest, talks were delayed for various reasons, including the assembly election held in April this year.Mizoram claims 509 square miles of the Inner Line Reserved Forest (ILRF) delineated in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, as its legitimate area or boundary. Assam, however, considers the border defined by a 1933 map prepared by the Survey of India in 1933 as its constitutional boundary.Since Aug 2021, the two states have held four rounds of ministerial-level talks, besides official-level negotiations and virtual meetings, to resolve the decades-old border dispute.Tensions along the border had often led to incidents, but formal efforts to resolve the dispute gained momentum only after police forces from the two states exchanged fire on the outskirts of Vairengte town in Mizoram’s Kolasib district on July 26, 2021. The Assam govt initiated the talks in Aug that year with its border protection and development minister Atul Bora leading a delegation to Aizawl for discussions with a Mizoram team headed by then home minister Lalchamliana.
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