New Delhi: While the Mizoram NGO Coordination Committee (NGOCC), a joint body of the major civil society and student bodies of the state, has expressed its opposition to New Delhi’s announcement last year to scrap the Free Movement Regime (FMR) arrangement with neighbouring Myanmar, state chief minister Lalduhoma has told the assembly that he is in favour of regulation of the cross-border movement.
In February 2024, soon after the Union home minister Amit Shah had stated that India government had decided to scrap the FMR, Lalduhoma had visited New Delhi to convey to him the “Mizo people’s stance against border fencing along the Myanmar border with Mizoram”.
However, speaking at the Mizoram assembly on March 10, Lalduhoma said that his government felt the necessity of restricting movement across India-Myanmar border and agreed with the Centre in the introduction of a new protocol to regulate cross-border movement under FMR.
The Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) leader also stated during the Question Hour that though initially his government was opposed to New Delhi re-imposing Protected Area Permit (PAP) on Mizoram (besides two other northeastern states) last year, it later understood why the Union government thought it necessary.
According to The Mizoram Post, giving reasons for its support to the Union government’s decision, the chief minister said that Mizoram was “being secretly used as a transit route by foreigners travelling to Myanmar, which has become a grave concern for the Centre.”
He told the assembly that as many as 2,000 foreigners visited Mizoram between June and December 2024 but many of them did not come to as tourists and “left the state unnoticed”.
The news report stated that the chief minister also “alleged that some foreigners even crossed the Indo-Myanmar border and entered the Chin hills in the neighbouring country to give military training to pro-democratic forces”.
The report underlined that a British army personnel had also been arrested in Aizawl “when he was found in possession of live ammunition after he returned from Myanmar last year”.
According to a Times of India report, the chief minister said that “the recent visit of Mizoram by the US ambassador to India without any prior initiation also came as a surprise”.
The news report said, “Centre has been closely watching the situation in the border areas after China and the US involved themselves in the Myanmar conflict”.
Though Amit Shah had announced that the Union government would scrap FMR, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is yet to issue a notification to that effect. Lalduhoma told the House on March 10 that there is a new protocol issued by the ministry last December as per which the FMR range has been reduced from 16 km to 10 km on either side.
“Under the new guidelines, individuals crossing the border from India to Myanmar and vice versa will be given a border pass which is valid for seven days”. The report added, “The border pass will be issued to only people living within 10 km radius on either side of the border on production of credentials confirming their residence within the 10 km territorial limit.”
Not just in Mizoram, in neighbouring Nagaland and Manipur too, people residing close to the Myanmar border have opposed both fencing of that border and scrapping of the FMR arrangement and/or reducing the radius of free movement, on grounds that it hampers maintaining their ethnic relations and kinship with people on the other side of the international border.
Manipur’s majority community, the Meiteis, are, however, for fencing the international border.
