Parliamentary secretary for Agriculture and chairman NSAMB, Dr Benjongliba Aier Tuesday called upon the representatives of Yajang-C village (Nagaland) and Rankham village (Assam) to mend the gap and uphold the traditional aged old good neighbourly relations between the Nagas and Assamese and particularly the people of Yajang and Rankham.
According to Border Peace Coordination Committee (A-N) president, B.P. Bora, parliamentary secretary in an effort to usher peace between the two communities, convened a joint peace meeting comprising of members from Coordination Committee (A-N), key members of the Gabharoo festival organizing committee, select representatives from Rankham village (Assam) and council members from Yajang-C village at Yajang-C, Mokokchung district.
Dr. Benjongliba recalled those days where both villagers respected each other without any border disputes.
However, he said with the passage of time, “people from the plains sector encourages rich people from towns and cities to do some types of cropping in the border belt and thus the traditional land belonging to Nagas encroached upon and this is the root cause for igniting trouble leading to misunderstanding and mistrust amongst the peace loving border people”.
It may be noted that border skirmish erupted between the villagers of Rankham (under 101-Mariani Assembly constituency, Assam) and Yajang-C (under 30-Alongtaki Assembly constituency, Nagaland) both villages located in the Assam-Nagaland border during April last year.
Since then both the states were compelled to deploy armed forces to curb the situation. Though the situation was reported to be normal at the moment, there have been no public interactions amongst the two villagers.
B.P. Bora welcomed the gathering and thanked the MLA of Alongtaki constituency for coming forward to peace building in the locality.
Indreswar Gogoi, a prominent personality and teacher from Rankham locality also lauded Dr. Benjongliba’s zeal for peace building initiative and hopeful to have a joint peace coordination meeting involving both Rankham and Yajang-C villagers.
Vice president of BPCC (A-N), Imsu Jamir reminded the members that without the eagerness of the people from either side, peace cannot be imposed by this committee.
He remarked that, “this is very remarkable one as because in April last year when the situation arose in the Rankham-Yajang-C sector, public living there did not give a chance to the BPCC (A-N) to mediate rather they were swayed away to different pressures including political angles and therefore BPCC (A-N) was left with not much scope for peace coordination”.
Coordinator of the BPCC (A-N), Temsu Wati explained the overall situation prevailing in the entire border belt with an emphasis for coordinated living by all concerned.
During the meet, it was also decided that the Gabharoo festival instituted in 2012 would be celebrated with blessings of the elected representatives of the Mariani and Alongtaki legislative assembly constituencies followed by the lone MP of Nagaland and of the MP of Jorhat, chief ministers of both the states and district administrations of Jorhat and Mokokchung districts to draw essential attentions in mitigating future conflicts if any in a meaningful way.
At the conclusion of the meet, the members proposed that joint peace meeting between Rankham and Yajang villagers should take place before Magh Bihu, January 14 and organizers of the Gabharoo Festivity-2016 asked to coordinate along with the BPCC(A-N) team.