Shillong, April 19 :    Shillong, April 19:  If the icy heights of Kargil were worth fighting for, so are their fertile plains which have been forcibly occupied by Bangladesh, feel Khasi tribal chiefs, who recently submitted a memorandum to the President, seeking his intervention to get back their 'lost land'. The Pyrdiwah flare-up has put the focus back on their demand for a re-survey of the international border. The chiefs are also not averse to a military solution to get back these tracts. The eight-page memorandum to the President ends with a truculent message. 'We draw your attention to the fact that one of our youths, the late Captain Cliffor K. Nongrum, MVC, laid down his life for the cause of the country at Kargil to protect the inhospitable and treacherous snowcapped mountains and, more importantly, to protect the LoC with Pakistan,' it said. 'We seek similar intervention, attention and protection in settlement and in resolving the border of the Khasi states with Bangladesh, which has illegally occupied thousands of acres of valuable cultivable lands.' L.M. Syiem, one of the tribal chiefs, said the government was apathetic to their plight. 'Really, why can't the government of India take our issue seriously? It is a national issue but they are just not bothered about our problem,' he said at a news conference after the 200-odd tribal heads handed the memo to Governor M.M. Jacob. According to the chiefs, during the border demarcation - first with east Pakistan and later with Bangladesh when it was born - they lost thousands of acres of land. Their claim over their ancestral land, they said, was drowned in the larger conflict as the two hostile new-born nations tried to adjust in the post-British era. They said pacts were signed which violated the rights of the Khasis. 'Most of these erstwhile Khasi states which had to join India fell on the international border but they were never consulted when the borders were drawn,' the chiefs said. Years have passed, but the flashpoints are still the same. Pyrdiwah, Lyngkhat, Raid Mukertilla figured then as it does today in the border standoff. This week, villagers making a road at Lyngkhat may have been one reason for the Bangladesh Rifles strike at Pyrdiwah. But in 1956, S. Khongwang, sordar of Mukertilla, wrote to the officer-in-charge of Dawki outpost, saying he had made preparations to build a footpath from Pyrdiwah to Borhill to Lyngkhat so that they could be easily protected by 'our shipai' against the 'shipai from Pakistan'. Even then, the Pakistani army had tried to stop them. After Bangladeshi Rifles destroyed their new footpath a few weeks ago, the people of Lyngkhat had asked the government to send the army to protect them from Bangladeshi aggression as they did not have faith in the Border Security Force. All these are included as annexures in the memorandum to the President which is also another instance of history repeating itself. Delegations of tribal chiefs have been serving similar memorandums over the last 50 years. 'Now, we are gathering all the historical documents to prove our claims,' says John F. Kharshiing, a spokesman of the tribal chiefs. 'We will continue to fight for what is rightfully ours.'