Nagaland Assembly passes resolution against Centre’s move to fence India-Myanmar border

The Nagaland Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution urging the Union government to reconsider its decision to fence the Indo-Myanmar border and suspend the free movement regime with the neighbouring country.

Two days earlier, the Mizoram Assembly had also adopted a similar resolution.

Last month, the Union government said that it would end its free movement regime pact with Myanmar and seal the border between the two countries.

The free movement regime, which has been in place since the 1970s, allows visa-free movement for people living within 16 kms on either side of India and Myanmar’s shared, largely unfenced, 1,643-km-long border along Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

They can spend a day across the border without any document, and stay up to 72 hours “with effective and valid permits issued by the designated authorities on either side”. The regime was devised keeping in mind the traditional social relations among those living along the border and to facilitate cross-border trade between the kindred tribes on both sides.

The resolution in the Nagaland Assembly, moved by Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton on Friday, said that suspending the regime would cause hardship and inconvenience to Nagas living in the border areas “as the traditional land holding system straddles across the international border in many areas”.

The resolution said...

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