JORHAT, April 22 � Congress MLA of Mariani constituency Rupjyoti Kurmi and some villagers of Rongkham and many other bordering villages of Jorhat district said that they had submitted a �letter petition� to the Chief Justice of India on Tuesday through online procedures to find a solution to the decades-long border issue between Assam and Nagaland expeditiously.
Addressing a press conference here, Kurmi said that through the online submission �we appealed for introduction of a special bench by the honourable Chief Justice of India to look into the vexed interstate border issue.� He said, the people of Assam near the border areas like Rongkham and other villages of Jorhat, Golaghat and Sivasagar districts have been suffering a lot because of the marauding miscreants from Nagaland.
�When such border skirmishes occur, citing the matter as �subjudice� officials of the Government of Assam do not take necessary measures to protect the lives and properties of the villagers in these vulnerable areas,� Kurmi said.
Highlighting the statistical data of large-scale encroachment by Naga miscreants in Desoi Valley reserve forest, Desoi reserve forest and Tiru Hill reserve forest, the MLA alleged that out of the total 25,037 hectares of land area of the three reserve forests, over 18,651 hectares were encroached. Neither the officials of the State forest department nor the district administration of Jorhat took any initiative for evicting the Naga encroachers from those areas, he added.
Narrating the sordid experiences of facing physical torture by the wrongdoers, a villager of Rongkham locality said that they were not provided security by police even as the group of armed miscreants occupied their agricultural land and took away the livestock in their possession. �Police refrained from going to the spot. Since the first part of February this year, the miscreants have intensified brutalities in Rongkham and its adjoining villages,� said Madan Gogoi.
Expressing concern over the negligence of the district administration towards the security of the villagers, many other representatives of the villages requested the State Government to deploy adequate number of security personnel in the area as soon as possible.
Attending the press conference, advocate Sudipta Nayan Goswami of Jorhat hoped that the apex court would consider the villagers� appeal soon enough to look into the matter that has remained unsolved for decades, although the State Government of Assam had moved the Supreme Court in this regard in 1988 for a permanent solution to the issue.
