In the second of the two-part series, we investigate how oil exploration may face issues due to the decades-old boundary dispute between Assam and Nagaland. Read part one here.
The National Board of Wildlife’s approval for Vedanta’s oil exploration project on the Eco Sensitive Zone of Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary (HGWLS) has sparked a border row between Nagaland and Assam yet again. With plans to conduct exploratory drilling in Dissoi Valley getting a nod from the Centre, Naga groups have approached the Home Ministry citing a decades-old boundary dispute between Assam and Nagaland.
Dissoi Valley River Forest is a contested terrain. The forest is a part of a 512-km long border between Assam and Nagaland locked in a legal dispute in the Supreme Court of India also known as Disputed Area Belt (DAB). The dispute goes back to 1962 when the Union Government decided to carve Nagaland out of Assam.
In April 2024, Jorhat DFO Nandha Kumar conducted a site visit to the Vikuto and Akahuto, two villages in the Mokukchung district of Nagaland, closest to the proposed oil exploration site in the Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest. As per Vedanta’s proposal, the approach road to Vikuto will be developed as an access route to Vedanta’s project site after securing the nod from the NBWL.
When a team of the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) led by eminent elephant expert, Raman Sukumar visited the proposed location for the first exploratory oil rig in Dissoi Valley Forest on the Assam-Nagaland border on November 15, 2024m they were in for a surprise. Several representatives from the Ao community had gathered in the area and promptly asked the NBWL team to leave forcing them to abandon the site inspection.
On November 19, Ao Senden, the apex civil organization of Ao Naga Community of Mokokchung District shot off a letter seen by EastMojo to the Home Minister for State, Bandi Sanjay Kumar terming the exercise of sending the NBWL team as a mischievous game:
“The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change [MoEFCC] is playing a mischievous game by according approval/clearance on ancestral traditional forest lands belonging to Ao Naga Community of Mokokchung District and abetting the Government of Assam in land encroachments. That, GPS can be manipulated and maps can be drawn as such. But the ground realities of all lands should be verified on the spots and take into confidence all stakeholders before any approval/clearance is [sic] made by the Union MoEFCC, but neither unilateral nor ex-parte decisions should be made. These actions are provocations which may lead to conflict, loss of lives and property, which we cannot ignore if corrective measures are not taken by the Government of India at the earliest,” the letter said.
Violating status quo
In 2021, Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest turned into a site of a border clash. On May 24, 2021, a Naga village council in Mokukchung district accused Assam Police personnel of setting houses on fire and damaging areca nut plantations in Vikuto, situated next to Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest. On May 27, 2021, Rupjyoti Kurmi, now a BJP legislator from Mariani, marched inside the Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest with 45 people alleging that some Nagas had encroached on over 1000 hectares of forest land. When Kurmi visited the site, he alleged that some of the so-called Naga encroachers fired upon him. Assam and Nagaland deployed additional security forces to guard the border for over two months. On July 31, 2021, security forces were withdrawn as an agreement was signed between Assam and Nagaland to maintain the status quo and respect boundaries.
Flanked by rolling hills covered with dense bamboo forests and terraces cultivating a mix of paddy, areca nut and oil palm plantations, Vikuto’s approach road comes six kilometres from the Chutaphala border gate on the State Highway H 702 connecting Mariani with Mokukchung. Vedanta’s proposed oil exploration project is four kilometres away from Vikuto village.
Imtipokyim, the General Secretary of the apex body of Ao Naga Community in Mokukchung, Ao Senden, told EastMojo that the Assam Government’s plans to explore oil through a private company were not known to the locals. “People were not informed about this project. The project will need prior consent from the community living in the proximity of such a project. This violates the agreements made earlier with the Assam government and the ongoing peace talks between various Naga groups and the Indian government,” said Imtipokyim.
The Ao leader felt that the atmosphere was similar to the time when newly proposed administrative boundaries under the Nagaland State Act of 1962 did not sit well with the Naga leadership. The Naga groups claimed over these territories in present-day Assam such as Mariani, Merapani and even parts of the erstwhile Cachar and Nagaon district. Assam, on the other hand, has been claiming that Nagas encroached on around 59,000 hectares of forest land in Assam in Sivasagar, Jorhat, Golaghat and Karbi Anglong Districts. As a result of this dispute, violent clashes between Assam and Nagaland have been reported in 1965, 1968, 1979, 1985, 2007, 2014 and 2021.
Anticipating the ongoing border conflicts with Nagaland, the Assam Forest Department kept the ESZ much bigger than the HGWLS. As per the ESZ notification published in 2018, HGWLS is only 20.98 square kilometres whereas the area of the EZS is 264.52 square kilometres. “We kept the Naga encroachments in the Mariani division especially in the DAB areas in mind while notifying the eco-sensitive zone of Hollongapar. The ESZ has continued to be a deterrent from further encroachment,” a senior forest official told East Mojo on the condition of anonymity.
The minutes of the 81st meeting of the Standing Committee of NBWL that approved the project further illustrate the bone of contention raised by the Naga groups opposing the project. “The purpose of declaring such a large ESZ is to provide connectivity to the sanctuary with Dissoi Valley RF and beyond into forested habitats in Nagaland. The project site is in a disputed area between Assam and Nagaland. The committee had to cross the Nagaland check post. They were received by the Border Magistrate of Nagaland and the local Naga inhabitants. The local people informed the committee that no drilling operation would be allowed without getting permission from the Village Council and the Nagaland Government,” the minutes state.
Older wounds of peripheries
Hydrocarbon exploration as well as extraction has been contentious in these border areas between Assam and Nagaland for decades now. Further west of Hollongapar in the border town of Borholla of Jorhat district, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), a government oil producer runs several oil and gas drills on the bordering Bhandari sub-division of Wokha district in Nagaland. Lotha community villages situated on the border have been complaining about illegal surveys routinely to the Nagaland government. On the other hand, ONGC was driven out of the Changpang oilfield in 1994 as land owners opposing the extraction and National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isac-Muivah), a militant group demanding royalty from the Indian government-owned company. ONGC left Changpang and Tssori villages situated close to Borholla in a mess with pollutants from abandoned oil wellheads impacting the village residents and their commons.
Data from 2022 cited by Nagaland MLA, Y. Mhonbeno Humtsoe in August 2024 from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas shows that ONGC operates eight oil fields in the Disputed Area Belt (DAB) between Assam and Nagaland. “From 2018 to 2022, a total of 657,432 metric tonnes of crude oil, equivalent to 4.9 million barrels, was extracted. At the then-current rate of crude oil, the calculated royalty amounts to approximately Rs 3,399.79 crores, of which Rs 553 crores were paid to Assam as royalty,” he said in a press conference.
Humtsoe suggested that if the governments of Assam and Nagaland agreed to a fifty-fifty share of the royalty proceeds from the DAB oil extraction areas, Nagaland would have received Rs 276.50 crores as its share of the royalty from the sale of crude oil extracted from 2018 to 2022. With the Union government approving Vedanta’s exploration plans, Ao Naga groups have indicated no such arrangements have been made yet by the Union ministry to share any revenue nor has the Assam government bothered to inform the local representatives of the Ao community.
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