Assam BJP govt bulldozes 1080 homes in Muslim majority area!
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Guwahati: The Himanta Biswa Sharma-led BJP government in Assam on Saturday evicted 1080 families, razed down their homes and cleared 140 hectares of land in a Muslim-majority area in the state’s Goalpara district, claiming that the said land is part of reserve forest, Scroll.in reported.
Saturday’s eviction drive was the second major one in the district. Authorities demolished the homes of 690 families in Hasilabeel, a wetland near Goalpara town, on June 16.
In the past month, the Himanta Sarma administration carried out at least five eviction drives in four districts of Assam, which cumulatively displaced around 3,500 families.
According to Goalpara Divisional Forest Officer Tejas Mariswamy, 2,700 structures were razed on Saturday since the land is part of the Paikan Reserve Forest of the Krishnai Range.
However, one of those who lost homes in the drive, Mizanur Rahman, said that all the three houses belonging to his family and relatives were razed down on the day, and they have no land anywhere else, Scroll.in reported. Rahman said that people were living in the cleared land even before it was declared a reserved forest. It is a revenue village, he said.
When the Assam government proposed to declare Paikan as a reserve forest in 1959, it was declared the same only in 1982.
It is learnt that in the past 40 years, 472 villages of Goalpara district were washed away in erosion by the Brahmaputra river. Therefore, thousands of people who became homeless and landless took shelter in the reserve forest land since they didn’t have any alternative.
On June 30, 93 Muslim families were evicted from their lands in Assam’s Nalbari district, claiming encroachment of reserve land.
