Eviction drives part of larger push to counter demographic shifts

Assam grabbed national headlines in the wake of eviction drives in forest land, khas or government land and in wetlands.

- SABIR NISHAT

Five massive eviction drives were carried out in Goalpara, Dhubri, Nalbari and Lakhimpur in a span of little over one-month, the recent being the clearing of 11,000 bighas of land in the Rengma Reserve forest at Uriamghat, bordering Nagaland.

The present BJP-led regime has freed more than 1.29 lakh bighas of land (over 42,500 acres) or roughly 167 sq.km (an area larger than present-day Chandigarh) from the grip of encroachers during the past four years of its tenure. It is a remarkable achievement by any standards given the fact that carrying out eviction is easier said than done as lot of groundwork has to be done by the government with the possibility of it getting entangled in legal wrangles.

The recent eviction drives were carried out by the respective administrations in an organised and meticulous manner. There were no mass protests and upheaval of any sort as the encroachers, served with prior notices by the administration, vacated their premises built on encroached land and moved out with their belongings much before the bulldozer arrived on the scene.

It was only during the eviction drive at Paikan reserve forest in Goalpara district, an encroacher was killed during police firing when a group attacked the forest and police personnel when they went there to carry out the operation. It seems from the available information that the encroachers mostly from Dhubri and South Salmara-Mankachar were instigated by some political forces with the needle of suspicion pointing towards the grand old party. A day before when the police and forest personnel went there nothing untoward happened. The moot question that arises: why the sudden attack that caught the police and forest personnel off guard? This requires a probe to reach at the bottom of the truth.