The boundaries of the Northeastern states will be demarcated through satellite imaging, the Centre informed on Sunday.
This was decided to settle inter-state border disputes that have become a growing concern, often leading to violence.
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 (NEC).
The NESAC helps augment the developmental process in the Northeast region by providing advanced space technology support.
The inter-state border disputes have come under fresh focus recently after five Assam Police personnel and a civilian were killed in clashes along the Assam-Mizoram border.
Few months ago, Union Home Minister had mooted the idea for demarcation of inter-state boundaries through satellite imaging. He suggested roping in NESAC for mapping the inter-state borders and forests in the Northeastern region and coming up with a scientific demarcation of boundaries between states.
The Shillong-based NESAC is already using space technology for flood management in the region.
Since 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, two senior government functionaries said.
Once the satellite mapping is done, the boundaries of Northeastern states could be drawn and the disputes could be resolved permanently, they said.
During the July 26 Assam-Mizoram border clashes, six Assam cops were killed and over 50 were left injured.
While the Mizoram government claimed that a 509 square-mile stretch of the inner-line reserve forest notified in 1875 under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation 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 it.
After a massive tussle in 2018, the border row resurfaced in August last year and then in February this year.
However, the escalating tensions were successfully defused after a series of parleys with the intervention of the Centre.
This July, a fresh border standoff cropped up again with both trading charges of encroachment on each other lands.
