a day ago
Assam: Homes of 1,080 families bulldozed in Goalpara eviction drive
Authorities in Assam's Goalpara district on Saturday cleared 140 hectares of land in the Paikan Reserve Forest, displacing 1,080 families, most of whom are Muslims of Bengali origin, officials told Scroll.
This was the second major eviction drive in the district. On June 16, the authorities demolished homes of 690 families in Hasilabeel, a wetland, near Goalpara town.
At least five eviction drives have been carried out in four districts of Assam in the past month, which displaced nearly 3,500 families.
Goalpara Divisional Forest Officer Tejas Mariswamy told Scroll that 2,700 structures were demolished on Saturday.
'The land is part of the Paikan Reserve Forest of the Krishnai Range,' Mariswamy said.
Mizanur Rahman, a 28-year-old resident of Bidyapara revenue village, lost his homes during the eviction drive.
He and eight members of his family have nowhere to go, Rahman said. 'All of the three houses including the pacca house were razed today…we don't have land anywhere else,' he said.
'People have been living here before it was declared a reserved forest,' said Rahman. 'It is a revenue village.'
The Assam government had proposed to constitute Paikan as a reserve forest in 1959. It was declared a reserve forest in 1982.
In 2022, the Goalpara Lawyers Association sent a memorandum to the state government and forest department saying that the forest rights and claims of several persons over the land in the area had not been settled.
The association had asked 'for compliance of the mandatory provisions' under 1891 Assam Forest Regulation as decided in October 1959, before the evictions take place in the protected forest areas.
Jiten Das, the president of the district lawyers' association, and Wazed Ali, the secretary of the body, said that in the past 40 years, 472 villages of Goalpara district had been washed away because of erosion caused by the Brahmaputra river.
As a result, they said, thousands of people had become homeless and landless. 'Many of these people, having found no alternative for their survival, took shelter in the PRF land, erecting a shed over their head,' they added.
A large number of security personnel had been deployed for patrolling in the areas in the past few days.
District officials had said that the majority of the people living in the area had already dismantled their homes and shifted out before the eviction drive took place.
Deputy Commissioner Khanindra Choudhury told Scroll that the evictions were carried out peacefully as more than 1,000 police personnel had been deployed. About 40 bulldozers were used, he said.
Last week in Dhubri district, where an eviction drive led to the demolition of the homes of 1,400 Bengali-origin Muslim families, the authorities had allocated land for the rehabilitation of the affected persons. The administration had also earmarked Rs 50,000 for one-time relief for residents to transport their belongings.
Ninety-three families of Bengali-origin Muslims were evicted on June 30 in Assam's Nalbari district during an anti-encroachment drive on nearly 150 acres of village grazing reserve land in the Barkhetri revenue circle.
On July 3, about 220 families were evicted during an anti-encroachment drive in upper Assam's Lakhimpur district. The district authorities said that the families were living on 77 acres of land at four locations, including three village grazing reserves.
Between 2016 and August 2024, more than 10,620 families – the majority of them Muslim – have been evicted from government land, according to data provided by the state revenue and disaster management department.
