Even as 21 goods trucks moved to Mizoram and many vehicles returned to Assam from the border state on Monday, the 13-day-old blockade of the National Highway (NH) 306 in Assam continued as the protesters refused to relent, police said.
Assam Police officials said that attempts were made to convince the agitators, but they refused to call off the lockade until the Mizoram government withdrew their security personnel forces from Assam’s Cachar and Karimganj districts.
Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla had, on Sunday, held a meeting through video conferencing with Assam and Mizoram Chief Secretaries Jishnu Barua and Lalnunmawia Chuaungo, respectively to discuss restoration of normalcy on the inter-state border.
Chuaungo told the media in Aizawl that Chief Minister Zoramthanga is also contemplating ferrying essentials from neighbouring countries — Bangladesh and Myanmar — besides Tripura and Manipur since the blockade has caused a big distress to the population.
Central para-military forces are being deployed along the border area to deal with the situation.
The border tension along the two states intensified after the bomb blast at the Upper Painom Lower Primary school in Cachar after Friday midnight causing massive damage to the government school.
Earlier, the alleged abduction of 48-year-old Intyaz Ali from Lailapur border area of Cachar district along the Assam-Mizoram border and his subsequent death in the Mizoram government’s custody on November 2 prompted the residents of border areas in Assam to agitate.
Due to the blockade at Lailapur, over 250 Mizoram-bound, goods-laden vehicles remained stuck for 13 days now on Monday as the local agitators and vehicle drivers refuse to budge unless Mizoram withdraws its security personnel from Assam and provides security for the movement of vehicles in Mizoram.
Lingering since October 9, the tense situation along the 164.6-km Assam-Mizoram border took an ugly turn when around 20 shops and houses were burnt and over 50 people sustained injuries in attacks and counter-attacks by people on either side on October 17.
Though the situation normalised after a series of meetings and the Central government’s intervention, the border trouble resurfaced after a fortnight on October 28 along Assam’s Cachar and Karimganj, which abut Mizoram’s Mamit and Kolasib.
