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No headway in border survey

By The Assam Tribune

SHILLONG, June 29 � No headway has been made in the joint survey of the disputed Meghalaya-Bangladesh border, which has remained suspended since December 16, with an official today saying it could resume only if the matter was taken up at the higher level by Dhaka and New Delhi.

The verification was mooted in 12 disputed patches bordering Meghalaya, stretches of which were under �adverse possession� of either countries and had started in the first week of December last year.

�Every time we tried to resume the survey, objections were raised by locals. The objections were mostly in the area which were un-inhabited and uncultivated. Locals from either sides claimed the tracts to be theirs arguing that they used to cultivate the areas in the past,� the official of the Meghalaya Survey Department said.

The areas under adverse possession, 12 of them in the Meghalaya sector, were created when the two countries demarcated the international boundary in the mid-1960s.

He said officials from the Ministry of External Affairs had also visited some of the disputed areas in the first week of June and were also confronted by the locals.

Survey officials here said the exercise, mooted by the Joint Boundary Working Group, could be taken forward only when the issues were resolved at a higher level. � PTI

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