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<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> Bangla fencing put on hold as farmers protest
Maitreyee HandiquePosted online: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email
NEW DELHI, November 13: The Meghalaya Government has stopped the fencing construction on the Indo-Bangladesh border.


It says the fencing cannot start before the local communities, which have been agitating against it in some pockets of the southern part of the state, get to air their grievances in a joint discussion.

“We have asked the National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC) to keep the work in abeyance for the time being,” a state Home department official said. NBCC is one of the agencies undertaking major works in the state.

Fencing of some 58 km of the 443 km-long border came to halt a few months ago after outcry by local farmers, who refused to give up their cultivable land that lapped over the ‘zero line’ the two countries had agreed to treat as No Man’s Land.

The disputed areas are Dawki, a major coal export post in Jaintia Hills, Nongjri and Nongshken, dominated by Khasi tribals.

Under a pact between the two countries, about 150 yards on either side of the border were meant to be habitation-free, but the official informed that apart from “areas of adverse possession” (disputed areas that both India and Bangladesh claim as occupied), village farmlands stretch into the ‘zero land’ zone on both sides of the border.

The official said the observation to keep 150 yards

free on the international border did not figure in the 1975 Indo-Bangladesh border pact.

“But it’s a gentleman’s agreement” to observe that the sanctity is maintained.

Two local NGOs — Hynniewtrep People’s Social Organisation (HPSO) and Coordination Committee of International Border (CCIB), an association of four local NGOs — have been raising the cudgels on behalf of the farmers. The CCIB reportedly wants no fencing to divide the tilled land.

The HPSO, a human rights organisation on the other hand, has taken a moderate stand, stating that the ‘zero line’ must be reduced from 150 to 30-40 yards in order to save farmlands, predominantly rice and betel nut- growing area.

Kyrshan War, who leads HPSO, agrees border fencing with patrol towers, being built at a cost of about Rs one crore a kilometre, will keep a check on smuggling and infiltration, a major issue in the Northeast. “But vast cultivable land will be lost. This has to be considered before any agreement is reached.”

maitreyee.handique@expressindia.com