Hyderabad: More than 1,100 families, predominantly Bengali-speaking Muslims, have been evicted from forest land across Assam’s Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat districts in a two-day demolition operation, according to officials and media reports.
On Sunday, October 18, authorities demolished the houses of around 500–600 families in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest in Nagaon. The previous day, 547 families had been evicted across the three districts, including 336 in Nagaon, 152 in Hojai and 59 in Golaghat. Several residents moved their belongings out before excavators reached the sites, and no untoward incidents were reported. Officials suggested that the eviction operation could continue.
Residents of Lutumari have contested the government's assertion that they were encroaching on forest land. They said their elders had worked as labourers for the Forest Department and that the state had settled them in the area under the taungya system introduced during the colonial period. Abdul Noor, whose house was demolished, said his family was allotted land in 1974. He added that more than 10 mosques, some of which were decades old, were also demolished.
The affected families had challenged the eviction proceedings before the Gauhati High Court but failed to obtain relief. In June, the court ordered them to vacate the land within 30 days, observing that the public interest in protecting forests took precedence over private claims to residence within reserve forests. It also directed that electricity connections be cut after the deadline.
The latest demolitions follow another eviction operation in the greater Lutumari area in November last year, which affected around 1,700 families. In Hojai, 152 households were removed from the Jamuna-Maudanga Reserve Forest after an earlier phase of evictions conducted this year. In Golaghat, the remaining 59 families living in No. 2 Negheribil were evicted following a court ruling in favour of the state government.
The Assam government has maintained that the drives are aimed at recovering forest and government land from encroachers. Data compiled from official sources indicate that around 19,000 families, most of them Muslims, have been evicted from government land in Assam over the past decade of BJP rule.