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Ramesh Menon in New Delhi
The Border Security Force in Pyrdiwah village in Meghalaya on Thursday created a corridor to reach the border outpost that they lost to the Bangladesh Rifles on Sunday.
The BSF has 32 jawans trapped in the observatory outpost. Food and other material was taken to them.
While firing continued in various places on the Assam border between the BSF and BDR, no firing was reported from the Meghalaya border on Thursday.
However, the village continues to be in the control of Bangladesh Rifles.
A source in Shillong said there was an uneasy lull in Pyrdiwah, with both the Bangladesh Rifles and the Border Security Force being present in the village. They were reportedly ignoring each other.
Meghalaya's additional chief secretary, J Tayeng, told rediff.com that there were indications that the Bangladesh Rifles wanted to withdraw from Pyrdiwah village.
Tayeng said the external affairs ministry was in constant touch with the Bangladesh high commissioner to defuse the situation in Meghalaya.
But the BSF was being reinforced in both Meghalaya and Assam, Tayeng said.
At Wednesday's flag meeting between the BSF and the BDR, Bangladesh was told that India had ample proof to show that Pyrdiwah was and is an Indian village.
The relief operation in Meghalaya was strained today with over ten thousand displaced villagers from Assam fleeing into the West Garo Hills due to skirmishes between border forces of India and Bangladesh in Assam.
Chief Minister E W Mawlong has sent a team of five ministers headed by health minister, Dr Bonkupar Roy, to make an on the spot assessment of the situation and figure out rehabilitation needs.
State officials are hopeful that something positive will turn up at the flag meeting between the BSF and BDR in Pyrdiwah.
G K Pillai, joint secretary, home affairs in charge of the north east, said the situation would get resolved in a day or so. He said meetings were going on at both the diplomatic and political levels to resolve the border conflict in Meghalaya and Assam.
A senior government functionary in Meghalaya said the theatre of action has now shifted to Assam. He said the only sensible way out was to diplomatically deal with the situation, as the state had 430 km of border with Bangladesh.
"Taking an aggressive stance just because India is a strong military and political power may not be the best solution in the long term," he said.
Talking to rediff.com, the Meghalaya governor, M M Jacob, said in both India and Bangladesh, administrative boundaries were not the same as social boundaries. There were numerous areas in both countries where residents ignored the boundaries and lived in the neighbouring country's enclaves, he said.
Jacob said this had to be settled by negotiations and one had to go back to accords signed between Mujibur Rehman and Indira Gandhi.
Meanwhile, Dhaka has reportedly said that it had not asked its forces to overrun Pyrdiwah, but it was done at a local level, and it would return Pyrdiwah back to India.
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