Assam: Hundreds go homeless in 2nd day of eviction drive at Pava Reserve

The drive to evict encroachers from a forest land in Assam’s Lakhimpur district continued for the second day on Wednesday, with 299 families residing on a 250 hectare tract left in the lurch.

The evictees, most of them Bengali-speaking Muslims, rued that they could not collect all of their belongings, and their crops were destroyed in the drive.

The exercise that began on Tuesday was being undertaken by the state to free up around 450 hectares in Pava Reserve Forest. Officials on the first day cleared 200 hectares in Mohghuli village, which was home to 201 families.

“The drive resumed today at 7.30 am. It was completed peacefully. We did not face any resistance,” a senior official of the district administration told.

The administration cleared the remaining 250 acres during the daylong exercise on Wednesday.

Around 70 bulldozers, excavators and tractors were pressed into action in Adhasona village, while 600 police and CRPF personnel stood guard, the official stated.

With some belongings in tow, Hasmat Alam (name changed on request), who witnessed his house being razed to the ground, claimed that he had been a resident of that area for the past 28 years.

“This year, the harvest was good. I grew brinjal, cabbage and cauliflower and sold some of the produce in the market. Around 70 per cent of the crop, however, got destroyed in the drive,” he said.

Some of the victims claimed that there are around 500 Hindu families living in the forest, and the “government must evict them too” if it is really concerned about encroachment.

According to the senior official, the Hindu families, most of them belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe communities, had in 2016 approached the Gauhati High Court seeking rehabilitation.