Staff Reporter

Shillong, Oct 3: The Federation of Khasi Jaintia and Garo People (FKJGP) today termed the State government’s decision to withdraw the police forces from the disputed areas along the inter-state border as a “misdiagnosing” of the problems faced by the border residents.

“The state government seems to have misdiagnosed the problems faced by the border people. (Withdrawing of the police forces from disputed areas) is like instead of giving medicine for stomach ache, the government is prescribing medicine for headache,” FKJGP president Dundee C Khongsit told reporters.

He said that the government’s decision would only be pouring fuel to the fire.

He said the problem will further worsen keeping in mind the communication gap that will arise due to deployment of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the border area.

“Usually, the CRPF are deployed as additional forces in situations arising due to law and order problems,” Khongsit said.

“Therefore, we feel that it is unwise for both the state government of Assam and Meghalaya to withdraw their respective police forces from the border,” he added.

On Saturday, the chief minister-level border talks between Assam and Meghalaya had decided to deploy the CRPF as a neutral force in the disputed areas even as they have asked their respective police forces to pull back as a confidence-building measure to resolve the long pending boundary dispute issue.