More than 1,100 Bengali Muslim families have been rendered homeless in a two-day eviction drive across Assam’s Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat districts, with authorities demolishing homes and reportedly razing more than 10 mosques, some of them over 50 years old.
According to media reports, on Sunday, the second day of the operation, authorities demolished the homes of more than 600 Muslim families in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest in Nagaon district, claiming that the structures had been built on encroached forest land.
A day earlier, 547 families were evicted under tight security across the three districts — 336 in Nagaon, 152 in Hojai and 59 in Golaghat.
While the administration maintains that the homes and mosques stood on encroached land, residents have disputed the claim, saying their families had originally worked as labourers for the Forest Department and were settled in the area by the government itself, according to a report by Scroll.in.
“We were settled by the government in 1974,” Abdul Noor, a 44-year-old resident whose house was demolished on Sunday, said.
Noor said his forefathers were landless people from nearby Juria and were among 300 families who had each been allotted four bighas of land. The residents had challenged the eviction in the Gauhati High Court but failed to obtain relief, he added.
Noor also claimed that more than 10 mosques, some of them over five decades old, had been razed during the operation, raising concerns about the destruction of long-standing places of worship alongside residential structures.
Forest Workers’ Settlements Disputed
In June, the All India Union of Forest Working People had urged the Assam government to halt the eviction drive, arguing that residents of four villages in the reserve had been settled under the taungya system and should not be treated as ordinary encroachers.
The villages are Kandarpa Longjap, Padumoni, Hatijur and No. 9 Kheroni.
Introduced by the British in the mid-19th century, the taungya system allowed forest workers to cultivate food crops alongside commercially valuable trees while working for the Forest Department. Citing a Forest Department communication dated June 7, 1974, the union argued that the settlements in the Kaki and Lutumari Longjap reserves had a historical basis.
The residents’ claims raise questions about the treatment of long-established forest settlements and whether their historical circumstances were adequately considered before the demolitions. The available account does not establish whether the administration addressed these claims before proceeding with the eviction drive.
Earlier Evictions Affected 1,700 Families
The latest operation follows another eviction drive in a separate part of the larger Lutumari reserve in November last year, when around 1,700 families were affected across nearly 800 hectares.
According to data compiled by Scroll.in from the Revenue Department and district authorities, around 19,000 families, most of them Muslim, have been evicted from government land during the decade of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule in Assam.
The latest drive has affected forest areas in all three districts, displacing families whose homes were demolished under the administration’s anti-encroachment campaign.
In Hojai, authorities demolished 152 households in the Jamuna-Maudanga Reserve Forest and cleared around 525 bighas of land. In Golaghat, the houses of the last 59 families at No. 2 Negheribil in the Merapani area were demolished.
In Nagaon’s Borpani Reserve Forest, the 336 affected families occupied around 216 hectares of land. Residents alleged that they were not given sufficient time to remove their belongings before the demolition operation beganThe evictions have once again brought the Assam government’s land-clearance campaign under scrutiny, particularly over the displacement of large numbers of Muslim families and allegations that long-established settlements have been treated as encroachments. The central questions remain whether the residents’ claims of government-backed settlement were adequately examined and what rehabilitation, if any, has been offered to those rendered homeless.
India Clarion
