Assam continues eviction; displaces 309 families on Sunday
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Tezpur: The Assam government began an eviction drive in Biswanath district on Sunday, displacing 309 families, officials said.
The eviction drive was started in the morning to clear encroachment on nearly 175 bigha or 23 hectares of land in the Village Grazing Reserve (VGR) in Japariguri, they said.
"The eviction drive is going on peacefully. There were 309 families who had encroached on 175 bigha of land. Notices were issued to them on August 1 to vacate the areas within 15 days," District Commissioner Simanta Kumar Das said.
He said all the families have already left the area, and many of them had dismantled their houses.
"We demolished the remaining houses. There was also one big tea garden. That is being dismantled now for the forestation drive later," he said.
The DC said 600 security personnel were deployed, and 20 excavators, along with dozens of tractors, were used during the eviction drive.
Another official said that the encroachers were mostly from the Bengali-speaking Muslim community.
Visiting the site, All Assam Minority Students' Union (AAMSU) General Secretary Kuddus Ali Sarkar alleged that the Himanta Biswa Sarma government has been evicting people in an "inhuman manner".
"We demand an immediate halt to the eviction drive. Unless people are rehabilitated properly, no eviction should take place," he said.
Supporting the state government's steps to evict encroachments on public land, several ethnic organisations have started 'Miya Kheda Andolan' (movement to drive out Miyas) in the state.
'Miya' is originally a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, and the non-Bengali-speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants. In recent years, activists from the community have started adopting this term as a gesture of defiance.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma used his Independence Day message to make further hate remarks against Bengali-speaking Muslims in his BJP-ruled state. The CM, whose administration is using everything in its power to evict Muslims from their homelands under the pretext of clearing encroachments, said on Friday that “illegal infiltration” poses an “existential threat” to Assam’s indigenous people. He claimed that the state is facing “everything from love jihad to land jihad.”
