Assam Eviction Drive: The eviction drive will affect nearly 2,000 families who have allegedly encroached on the forest land and turned it into a betel nut plantation linked with the betel mafia.
As a part of Assam’s massive crackdown against land encroachment by illegal migrants, the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government is now planning to launch a massive eviction drive in Golaghat. The move will clear 11,000 bighas (approximately 3,600 acres) of land in the Rengma Reserve forest at Uriamghat, bordering Nagaland.
The eviction drive will affect nearly 2,000 families who have allegedly encroached on the forest land and turned it into a betel nut plantation linked with the betel mafia.
Fearing the eviction, many people belonging to the Bengali-speaking Muslims who have been branded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh had fled the area and were trying to take shelter in other places in Assam.
Nearly 700–800 police personnel, along with teams from the Forest Department and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), were stationed in and around the Rengma Forest reserve.
Heavy machinery, including bulldozers and excavators, has also been mobilised for the operation.
The evictions come after extensive land surveys across 30 villages in the reserve forest area under the Sarupathar sub-division.
The Assam government claims that the encroachers originate from Muslim-dominated areas of Nagaon, Morigaon, Sonitpur, and even districts such as Cachar, Dhubri, Barpeta, and Hojai in Assam. Many illegal migrants are also from West Bengal and Bihar, according to the government.
Himanta Biswa stated that 70% of the identified encroachers had already vacated voluntarily and reiterated the government’s commitment to restoring forest and government land.
Last week, Mr Sarma had said that 1.29 lakh bighas (over 42,500 acres) of land have been cleared of encroachment in the last four years, while approximately 29 lakh bighas (more than 9.5 lakh acres) of land remain encroached in the state.
Amid a large-scale eviction drive in Assam, the Nagaland government has also issued an advisory to bordering districts to remain on high alert and prevent any spillover of displaced families into its territory during the eviction.
Meanwhile, the prominent Naga radical group NSCN (Niki) has claimed that the recent evictions by the Assam government were neither surprising nor unexpected but a deliberate attempt to seize Naga ancestral lands labelled as the “Disturbed Area Belt”, a misleading designation stemming from British colonial boundaries imposed for administrative convenience without consulting the Naga people.
