The Mizo Zirlai Pawl (Mizo Students’ Association) has demanded demarcation of the Assam-Mizoram boundary on the basis of the Inner Line Notification of 1875. It has also demanded handing over of the 509 sq mile Inner Line Reserve Forest to Mizoram.
Addressing a press conference here today, president of the students’ association P C Laltlansanga also called for steps to protect the cultivators living in the inter-state boundary areas between Assam and Mizoram.
A delegation of the association met Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi yesterday and submitted a memorandum to him on the issue and urged him to initiate steps for a permanent resolution of the boundary dispute between the two states on the basis of the 1875 notification.
The delegation also called upon the Assam Chief Minister to examine the historicity of the claim made by the Students’ Association.
According to Laltlansanga, the large-scale migration from erstwhile East Bengal, then East Pakistan and now Bangladesh through the Cachar-Karimganj corridor due to agrarian crisis to the fertile Barak valley resulted in the marginalisation of the indigenous people.
The Mizos, better known as Old Kukis, who were the first settlers in Cachar as reported in the census of India’s 1891 Assam Volume Report, were compelled to leave their homeland in Cachar district by the pressure from these migrants.
In 1875, an inner line was drawn to delimit the Mizo homeland. It was alleged that the Lushais, as the Mizos were known then, allegedly destroyed the forest lying south of the inner line of the southern frontier boundary of Cachar district for their jhum cultivation. In order to save the forest, the then Chief Commissioner of Assam declared the Lushai country measuring about 509 sq miles to the inner line reserved forest in 1877. The notification for the purpose was published in the Assam Gazette dated March 17,1877, said Laltlansanga.
Since the Mizos treated this as an offence, the Government of Assam duly admitted the fault and allowed the Mizo District Council to share the revenue collected from the villagers settled in the so-called reserved forest.
The then Secretary to the Government of Assam, Tribal Areas Department R V Subrahmanian through his letter (No TAD/FR/52/51 dated October 3, 1953 addressed to the Deputy Commissioner, Lushai Hills informed that the house tax collected from the villagers settled in the reserved forest in question should be credited to the District Council fund. The question of appropriation of taxes on buildings, tolls on persons, etc. within the reserved forest may be considered when a case actually arises, said the Secretary.
This clearly implies that the inner line forest measuring about 509 sq miles including 15 sq miles deforested by the then Commissioner of Assam for cultivation by famine-stricken Mizo families in 1910 is well inside the Lushai territory, he said.
When asked as to what was the reply of the Assam Chief Minister to the pleas made by his organisation, Laltlansanga said that Chief Minister Gogoi pleaded helplessness to hand over the inner line reserved forest area unless a Supreme Court of India order or a boundary commission adjudication to that effect.
The Assam Chief Minister, however, said that he would ask the Assam Chief Secretary to take up the issue with his Mizoram counterpart. The Mizo students’ body requested Gogoi at this point to initiate discussion at Deputy Commissioner level too.
The Mizo students’ body has also discussed the issue with the other partners of the North East Students’ Organisation, he said.
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Source: http://www.sinlung.com/News/Mizoram/627.html
Addressing a press conference here today, president of the students’ association P C Laltlansanga also called for steps to protect the cultivators living in the inter-state boundary areas between Assam and Mizoram.
A delegation of the association met Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi yesterday and submitted a memorandum to him on the issue and urged him to initiate steps for a permanent resolution of the boundary dispute between the two states on the basis of the 1875 notification.
The delegation also called upon the Assam Chief Minister to examine the historicity of the claim made by the Students’ Association.
According to Laltlansanga, the large-scale migration from erstwhile East Bengal, then East Pakistan and now Bangladesh through the Cachar-Karimganj corridor due to agrarian crisis to the fertile Barak valley resulted in the marginalisation of the indigenous people.
The Mizos, better known as Old Kukis, who were the first settlers in Cachar as reported in the census of India’s 1891 Assam Volume Report, were compelled to leave their homeland in Cachar district by the pressure from these migrants.
In 1875, an inner line was drawn to delimit the Mizo homeland. It was alleged that the Lushais, as the Mizos were known then, allegedly destroyed the forest lying south of the inner line of the southern frontier boundary of Cachar district for their jhum cultivation. In order to save the forest, the then Chief Commissioner of Assam declared the Lushai country measuring about 509 sq miles to the inner line reserved forest in 1877. The notification for the purpose was published in the Assam Gazette dated March 17,1877, said Laltlansanga.
Since the Mizos treated this as an offence, the Government of Assam duly admitted the fault and allowed the Mizo District Council to share the revenue collected from the villagers settled in the so-called reserved forest.
The then Secretary to the Government of Assam, Tribal Areas Department R V Subrahmanian through his letter (No TAD/FR/52/51 dated October 3, 1953 addressed to the Deputy Commissioner, Lushai Hills informed that the house tax collected from the villagers settled in the reserved forest in question should be credited to the District Council fund. The question of appropriation of taxes on buildings, tolls on persons, etc. within the reserved forest may be considered when a case actually arises, said the Secretary.
This clearly implies that the inner line forest measuring about 509 sq miles including 15 sq miles deforested by the then Commissioner of Assam for cultivation by famine-stricken Mizo families in 1910 is well inside the Lushai territory, he said.
When asked as to what was the reply of the Assam Chief Minister to the pleas made by his organisation, Laltlansanga said that Chief Minister Gogoi pleaded helplessness to hand over the inner line reserved forest area unless a Supreme Court of India order or a boundary commission adjudication to that effect.
The Assam Chief Minister, however, said that he would ask the Assam Chief Secretary to take up the issue with his Mizoram counterpart. The Mizo students’ body requested Gogoi at this point to initiate discussion at Deputy Commissioner level too.
The Mizo students’ body has also discussed the issue with the other partners of the North East Students’ Organisation, he said.
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Source: http://www.sinlung.com/News/Mizoram/627.html
