Northeastern states' borders to be demarcated through satellite imaging

The Centre has decided to demarcate boundaries of the Northeastern states through satellite imaging to settle interstate border disputes that are often becoming a cause of concern and sometimes even leading to violenceTwo senior government functionaries said the task has been given to the North Eastern Space Application Centre NESAC a joint initiative of the Department of Space DoS and the North Eastern Council NECThe NESAC helps augment the developmental process in the Northeast region by providing advanced space technology supportThe interstate border disputes have come under fresh focus recently after five Assam Police personnel and a civilian were killed in clashes along the AssamMizoram borderThe idea for demarcation of interstate boundaries through satellite imaging was mooted by Union Home Minister Amit Shah a few months agoShah had suggested roping in NESAC for mapping the interstate borders and forests in the Northeastern region and coming up with a scientific demarcation of boundaries between statesThe Shillongbased NESAC is already using space technology for flood management in the regionAlso read AssamMizoram border dispute Blockade endsSince there will be scientific methods in the demarcation of borders there will no scope for any discrepancy and there shall be better acceptability of the boundary solutions by the states the government functionaries saidOnce the satellite mapping is done the boundaries of Northeastern states could be drawn and the disputes could be resolved permanently they saidFive Assam Police personnel and a civilian were killed and over 50 others including a superintendent of police were injured when the Mizoram Police opened fire on a team of the Assam officials on July 26 following clashes along the two states borderWhile the Mizoram government claimed that a 509 squaremile stretch of the innerline reserve forest notified in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern FrontierRegulation of 1873 belongs to it the Assam side insisted that the constitutional map and boundary drawn by the Survey of India in 1993 was acceptable to itAfter a massive tussle in 2018 the border row resurfaced in August last year and then in February this yearHowever the escalating tensions were successfully defused after a series of parleys with the intervention of the CentreOn June 5 two abandoned houses along the MizoramAssam border were burnt down by unidentified persons fuelling tension along the volatile interstate borderNearly a month after this incident a fresh border standoff cropped up again with both trading charges of encroachment on each other landsThe major objectives of the NESAC are to provide an operational remote sensing and geographic information systemaided natural resource information base to support activities on development management of natural resources and infrastructure planning in the regionIt provides operational satellite communication applications services in the region in education health care disaster management support and developmental communicationThe other objectives include taking up research in the area of space and atmospheric science and establishing an instrumentation hub and networking with various academic institutions of the regionAlso to enable single window delivery of all possible spacebased support for disaster management and to set up a regional level infrastructure for capacity building in the field of geospatial technologyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever