Who among the following have signed the agreement to resolve Assam – Meghalaya border dispute in March 2022 ?

Question

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Correct — D, Chief Ministers of Assam and Meghalaya. The memorandum of understanding was signed in New Delhi on 29 March 2022 by Himanta Biswa Sarma for Assam and Conrad Sangma for Meghalaya — the two Chief Ministers, and only them. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was present at the signing and the agreement was concluded under the Centre's good offices, but he was a witness to it, not a party. That distinction is the entire question: a boundary between two States is a matter between those two States, and the Union cannot sign away a State's territorial claim on its behalf. The memorandum settled six of the twelve stretches along the boundary where the two States' claims differ, leaving the remainder for later rounds. Note the date anchor — the question is about the position as of the June-2022 exam, and it should not be read as saying the whole dispute was closed.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Wrong on every count. This is the composition of a law-and-order coordination meeting, not of a territorial settlement. Police chiefs manage flashpoints along a disputed boundary; they have no authority to redraw one, and the Union Home Secretary is an official, not a party to an inter-State agreement.  (b) This is the trap, and it is a good one, because Amit Shah was genuinely in the room. He hosted and witnessed the signing in New Delhi and the Centre had pushed both sides toward it. But the memorandum was a bilateral instrument between two States and carries two signatures, not three. Being present at a signing and being a signatory are different things — a distinction the question is built to test.  (c) Chief Secretaries and the Union Home Secretary staffed the process — the regional committees that examined the disputed stretches worked through officials at that level — but a settlement of territory is a political decision, and it was signed at the level of the Chief Ministers, not the bureaucracy.

Concept: Meghalaya was carved out of Assam — first as an autonomous State in 1970 and then as a full State on 21 January 1972 — and the boundary drawn at that time was never agreed on the ground. Meghalaya disputed the alignment inherited from the reorganisation law, and twelve stretches along the border remained in contention, several of them the scene of recurring violence. The March 2022 memorandum was the first substantial breakthrough in five decades: the two States set up regional committees which examined each disputed stretch against five agreed criteria and recommended settlements, and the Chief Ministers signed off on six of the twelve. Constitutionally, any change so agreed still has to be given effect by Parliament, since altering the boundaries of States is Parliament's power under Article 3 and touches the First Schedule.

State PCS 2022 Q27 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q27 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer