Golaghat, Assam – The government of Assam is getting ready for a huge eviction drive that will start on Tuesday morning in the Rengma Reserve Forest in the Golaghat district. This large operation attempts to remove suspected encroachments from about 10,000 bigha (about 3,300 acres) of land, which will affect at least 2,000 families.
On Monday, officials confirmed that the drive will start in the Uriamghat area, which is in the Sarupathar sub-division along the border between Assam and Nagaland. A high-ranking official from the Forest Department said, “The exact details are still being worked out, as the surveys continued today as well.” But it will be more than 10,000 bigha of land, where about 2,000 families have moved in.
To make the large-scale eviction easier, officials have carefully separated the entire impacted area into nine separate zones and are conducting surveys in each one. Another official explained how far the invasion had gone by saying, “An extensive land survey of 30 villages in the Rengma Reserve Forest was done.” It was discovered that the encroachers turned thousands of bigha of forest land into farmland.
Officials from the district administration made it clear that the Forest Department had given the encroachers proper notice, giving them seven days to leave the property on their own. An official acknowledged, “After this, most of the suspected encroachers began to leave places like Chilanijan, Kherbari, and Dayalpur.”
An official said that many of the encroachers are thought to be from other districts in Assam, like Nagaon, Morigaon, and Sonitpur. The official further said that “most belong to the minority community.”
The Assam Police has sent a top officer from its headquarters to Golaghat to keep the peace during the big operation. “We have adequate security staff on duty and are completely ready. An official said, “We have gotten help from the CRPF for the eviction exercise, in addition to our own staff.” They did not say how many troops were involved.
In the meantime, the government of Nagaland, which is next door, has told its bordering districts to keep a close eye on things. This step is meant to keep people who have been forced to leave their homes from crossing into Nagaland after the eviction drive in Assam.
Recently, on July 25, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma went to Uriamghat to look at the sites that had been encroached on. He said that around 70% of the people who had moved into the site had already left on their own. The Chief Minister further said that those who had moved into the encroached territory came from many different districts in Assam, such as Cachar, Sribhumi, Dhubri, Barpeta, Hojai, Nagaon, and Morigaon, as well as from other Indian states like West Bengal and Bihar.
On July 21, CM Sarma presented some general information about the state’s attempts to stop encroachment. He said that during the past four years, they had successfully cleansed 1.29 lakh bigha of land of encroachments. Even with these attempts, it is still said that a lot of land in the state, 29 lakh bighas, is being encroached upon.