Meghalaya Urges Centre To Compensate Landowners Along Bangladesh Border

With the Centre pushing to complete fencing along the India-Bangladesh international border, Meghalaya has sought a solution to a growing concern among landowners who could lose access to their agricultural plots once the barrier is built.

Meghalaya shares a 443-kilometre international border with Bangladesh. The state government has approached the Centre, proposing that the government take over land falling beyond the fence and compensate its owners rather than leave productive farmland inaccessible and eventually abandoned.

Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong said the issue had emerged along stretches from Garo Hills to East Jaintia Hills, where landowners and village authorities were not opposed to border fencing but had reservations about what would happen to their land after its completion.

"The border fencing is right from Garo Hills up to East Jaintia Hills; the landowners or the village authorities are not against border fencing. The only issue that the landowners have a reservation about is that once the fencing is completed, the land beyond the fencing will automatically become no man's land. If it falls into no man's land, then they cannot go for cultivation, so it becomes a wasteland," Tynsong said.

"So the concerned landowners want the Government of India to take over and pay them the compensation. This issue has been communicated to the Centre and we are waiting for the outcome of the communication," Tynsong added.