New day, new eviction drive in Assam | Officials say 1,500 Bengali-speaking Muslim families encroached forest land

Guwahati: A "massive" eviction drive aimed at clearing over 11,000 bighas of land began on Tuesday inside Rengma Reserve Forest at Uriamghat in eastern Assam's Golaghat district, sharing a border with Nagaland.

Several houses, shops and business establishments were demolished by using excavators in the presence of a large number of security forces and forest personnel.

Officials said more than 2,000 families had encroached on the forest land over the years, of which nearly 1,500 belong to Bengali-speaking Muslims. An official said eviction notices were served to 1,500 families while the remaining families had Forest Rights Certificates (FRC). Those possessing FRC are Bodos, Nepalis and Manipuris.

Golaghat district administration said most of the Muslim families have houses in other Muslim dominated districts like Barpeta, Nagaon, Dhubri and Morigaon and had illegally occupied the forest land. "Nearly 20% of the encroched land have been cleared today and the drive will continue tomorrow. Many families already vacated their houses after the notices were served recently," said an official.

CM Himanta Biswa Sarma recently said many Bengali-speaking Muslims had illegally converted the forest land into betel nut farms.

Eviction under BJP government:

The eviction at Uriamghat was the latest in the series of similar drives carried out in Dhubri and Goalpara districts in Lower Assam and in Lakhimpur district in North Assam. CM Sarma recently said 260 square kilometers of land have been cleared from "encroachers" during eviction drives carried out since his government assumed office in May 2021. Sarma said forest, wetlands, village grazing land and other government land had been illegally occupied by people belonging to a "particular religion" as part of plan for "demographic invasion" over the indigenous people in Assam.

Some eviction drive, however, turned violent following which at least five Bengali speaking Muslims were killed in police firing in Darrang, Kamrup Metro and Goalpara.

Opposition Congress and other parties alleged that the eviction drive targetting the Muslims was part of BJP's "polarization tactics" in the run up to the Assembly elections slated early next year. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said Sarma was "snatching" land from the poor people in order to hand them over to Adani, Ambani and Ramdev.

BJP, on the other hand, claims that the drive was carried out to protect indigenous people and their land from the "illegal Bangladeshi migrants."