Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday said that about one lakh of the 1.42 lakh inmates still taking shelter in relief camps in Kokrajhar and neighbouring districts of Dhubri, Chirang and Bongaigaon possess land documents and they will be rehabilitated soon. For the remaining 42,000-odd inmates, who do not possess land documents, the State Government and the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) authorities would soon decide on the process of verification of alternative documents and start their rehabilitation accordingly.
The BTC authorities had insisted that the credentials of the inmates of the relief camps be ascertained first before their rehabilitation and it was decided that only those people who possessed land documents be rehabilitated in the first phase.
Mr. Gogoi told journalists that during the peak of the clashes in Kokrajhar and neighbouring districts, totally 4,85,921 people had taken shelter in relief camps. Of them, 3,43,249 had already returned to their homes and as on Monday, 1,42,672 displaced people remained in the relief camps.
Mr. Gogoi also announced that his government would adopt a new land-use policy to prevent alienation of agricultural land. The new policy would indicate as to what percentage of land should be kept preserved for agricultural purposes and what percentage of land should be made available for setting up industries. He said that there was dearth of land for setting up big industries in Assam and only when the big industries agree to make farmers equity stakeholders, big industries could come up. The State government would constitute a committee to go into the issue of land-use policy, he said.
