Does Assam CM’s belligerence over border dispute mark turn from coalition builder to regional bully?

Five Assam police personnel fell to bullets on July 27 as a festering border dispute with neighbouring Mizoram took a bloody turn. Both states have contesting versions of the day’s events and accuse each other of opening fire first.

While the death of five policemen in an inter-state dispute is in itself egregious, the episode is astounding for a host of other reasons.

First, the Mizo National Front, the party which is in government in Mizoram, is part of the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power in both Assam and at the Centre.

Barely 48 hours before the hostilities, Union home minister Amit Shah had discussed the border dispute with the chief ministers of the two states in a meeting in Shillong. In the meeting, Shah reportedly advised the two chief ministers to solve the matter in the “spirit” of the North Eastern Democratic Alliance, a coalition of anti-Congress parties formed in the North East in 2016. The MNF is part of this coalition that the BJP spearheads, with Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as its convenor.

Significantly, it was Sarma, an ex-Congressman, who had played a key role in getting the regional parties to band together against his…

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