Corporate Vs Suspected Nationals Debate Hunts Asomiya

Evictions of encroachment, post-eviction reflection and adorable forgetting- one can narrate the story of the Assam government’s time-to-time actions against the encroachers from the reserved lands with the three words. For a long time, it has remained a normal development in the media space. Wherever there is a declared eviction drive against illegal settlers on government grazing fields, forest lands (including wetland) or other reserved areas, it invites some ‘highly sensitive’ journalists to describe the sorrow of those evicted families in the media space with additional inputs from the opposition parties. It used to get multiplied by another section of  ‘ultra-humanist’ intellectual and social thinkers. Slowly, everyone forgets the matter, and many of the encroachers return to the location to reoccupy their lands with the same logic that they have nowhere to go, as their ‘ancestral’ lands were washed away by the annual flood. The water of the Brahmaputra keeps flowing, and almost everybody happily forgets the cycles of encroachment-eviction-rehabilitation pursuing no due follow-up actions.

Probably for the first time,  a new narrative has been tried to establish that the evicted land (from the encroachers) will be allotted to the corporate houses (as the State government assured lands for a number of companies after the Advantage Assam initiatives. So the propagators make it sure that the initiative must be prevented as they argue that the corporation will only exploit the resource with little or no economic benefits to the locals. They try to cleverly establish that the corporate people are more harmful to the indigenous people than even the encroachers, where many of them are suspected to be Bangladeshi nationals. So, probably the time has come for the Asomiya people to decide who they presume more dangerous- the corporate and illegal migrants (against whom Assam witnessed a six-year-long agitation in the Eighties).

Amid the ongoing massive eviction drives, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that over 25,000 acres (40,000 bighas) of government and forest land have been recovered after clearing the encroachment in the last four years (read since he took the responsibility as the government head). The hardliner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader also reiterated the government’s resolve to continue the eviction drives as they pledged to reclaim over 4,400 acres (7040 bighas) of land under Barpeta, Nagaon, Bajali and Lakhimpur districts, belonging to 922  Sattras (Vaishnavite monasteries), which have been encroached upon by illegal immigrants during the previous Congress government.

His determination was reflected in the latest initiative to make the Paikan reserve forest (under Krishnai Forest Range in Goalpara district of western Assam) encroachment-free. If the eviction goes with proper objectives, it would recover nearly 1,040 bighas of land that will be cleared. The land is ecologically sensitive and part of a larger effort to restore balance to the forest. Notices have already been served and public announcements made.”  As the eviction drives were carried out in compliance with Gauhati High Court directives, over  90% of the encroachers (read Bangladesh origin Muslim families) vacated their places ahead of the operation started in the morning hours on 12 July. The district administration issued them the necessary notices many months back and reissued an order recently to leave the place by 10 July.

The prime opposition Congress party approached the State  Governor, Lakshman Prasad Acharya, with an appeal to halt the ongoing eviction operations. An Assam Congress delegation recently called on Governor Acharya and sought his intervention ‘against the dispossession of tribal, indigenous, minorities and other people from their rightful properties on the pretext of development’. State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi, while criticising the ongoing eviction drives, termed those as ‘inhuman’ and claimed that the saffron government was carrying out the operations to hand over 40,000 bighas of land to the corporate bodies. The deputy LoP in Lok Sabha also accused CM Sarma of trying only to protect his chair at the cost of evicting poor families.

A hyperactive State legislator, Akhil  Gogoi, visited a site of evictions in Dhubri and interacted with the displaced families. Terming the eviction as ‘illegal and unconstitutional, he assured them of continued initiatives for their rehabilitation. Legislator Gogoi was soon detained and sent back by the police.  All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a pro-Muslim party led by Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, staged a protest demonstration on 10 July in Chapar, where a number of party legislators participated along with thousands of their supporters.

The previous day, tensions mounted during the eviction drives carried out in three Muslim villages (Charuwa Bakra, Chirakuta and Santospur under Chapar revenue circle), where some agitating residents pelted bricks and stones at bulldozers on the ground. Some displaced people, including women, charged the police personnel on duty with bamboo sticks and other domestic utensils. Soon, they were dispersed by the police.  Finally, over 3,500 bighas of land were recovered after evicting over 1,050 families. The recovered plot of land has already been allotted to Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL) for erecting a thermal power plant with a proposed capacity of 3,200 megawatt (by the Adani group).

Earlier on 15 and 16 June, the authorities evicted over 670 Bangladesh-origin Muslim families from their plot of land under Hasila Beel, a wetland of Goalpara.  The large-scale operation successfully recovered nearly 1,500 bighas of government land. Later, nearly one hundred illegally settled families were evicted from the Bakrikuchi area under Barkhetri revenue circle in  Nalbari district to recover one hundred bighas of village grazing reserve land on 30 June. Another eviction took place in eastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district on 4 July to recover 250 bighas of village grazing lands after displacing over 215 families, including 25 belonging to indigenous communities.

Speaking to this writer, wildlife conservationist Soumyadeep Datta lauded the eviction drives to make all those government lands encroachment-free. The award-winning activist also expressed hope that the current government in Dispur will take decisive action against the menace of large-scale encroachment across the State. He pointed out that most of the illegal settlers were supported by the Congress leaders two to three decades ago for their selfish gains in electoral politics. Some evicted individuals even admitted on live television news that they were very happy during the Congress days. Now the Congress, which ruled Assam for many decades, should apologise to the people for their ill-motive works and also put those encroachers in trouble today, asserted  Datta.

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