After Darrang violence, Assam officials counsel people ahead of eviction drive

The Assam government is evicting alleged illegal settlers from Lumding reserve forest in Hojai district in compliance with court orders, over a month after violence during a similar drive in Darrang district left two people dead and over 20 injured. The first phase of the anti-encroachment drive passed peacefully on Monday as most of the settlers had been counselled by the district administration about the Gauhati High Court order to make the forest encroachment-free, Hojai Deputy Commissioner Anupam Choudhury said. The administration used elephants, excavators, and bulldozers to dismantle the illegal structures in Kamarpani and Betnala areas of the forest.

Four CRPF and three Assam Police battalions had been deployed in the area as an additional security measure.

12-year-old boy killed in Assam eviction had gone to collect Aadhaar

Some 500 hectares of the forest, a major habitat for elephants, spread over 22,403 hectares of land are under encroachment at present, officials said.

Land brokers involved in the encroachment have been booked and a hunt is on to nab them, a police officer said.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters in Guwahati that most of the illegal settlers had encroached the land for agriculture or business purposes.

Assam eviction violence: What we know so far

”The eviction is going on peacefully and the administration will have to carry it out as the high court has given an order. The government is committed to follow the order and will do so through dialogue and not by force,” Sarma said.

The high court passed an order on September 14 to make the forest encroachment-free after Hojai’s former BJP MLA Shiladiitya Dev filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before it early this year. A 12-year-old boy was among two people killed as violence erupted during the eviction drive in Gorukhuti in Sipajhar area in September. A cameraman hired by the Darrang district administration to document the drive was arrested after visuals showed him stomping on the body of one of the persons killed in police firing.

(With inputs from Press Trust of India)