A case of encroachment has led Assam officials to another across the Brahmaputra.
The Kamrup (Metropolitan) district authorities had on September 25 received a letter from BJP legislator Atul Bora seeking an investigation into allegations of encroachment by “new faces” in areas under the Dimoria, Sonapur and Hahanra panchayat areas of his constituency Dispur.
These areas are on the southern bank of river Brahmaputra, across Dhalpur and Gorukhuti areas of Darrang district where the police shot two persons, including a minor, during an eviction drive on September 23. Dhalpur is within 77,000 bighas of government land targeted to be freed from settlers, all Bengali-speaking Muslims.
Panchayat president raises alarm
“Sonapur gaon panchayat president, Md. Noor Ahmed Laskar, raised the alarm about people registered as voters and owning land elsewhere having grabbed land and posing a threat to the local people. The case has to be probed and the encroachers evicted,” Mr. Bora said.
Kamrup (Metropolitan) Deputy Commissioner Biswajit Pegu said he had asked the circle office concerned to investigate and prepare a report.
“We found out that the allegations are true and 17 families from Darrang district have taken refuge in the Dimoria-Sonapur areas. But they are not encroachers; they have put up with their relatives who have been staying there for quite some time,” he told The Hindu on September 29.
The investigation, however, revealed that the relatives of the evicted families have been squatting on a tribal belt where non-tribal people cannot possess the land. The district administration has ordered a separate probe into how they came to possess the land.
The British government had marked several areas as protected tribal belts and blocks under the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation Law of 1886 to keep non-tribal people off these areas. These blocks and belts were retained by the Assam government after Independence, though many such belts came to be occupied by non-tribal people later.
“We have asked Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to probe how the people of suspect nationality came to occupy land protected for the tribals,” Barasha Medhi, president of a local (Dimoria) students’ union said.
Forest encroachment
The Gauhati High Court has asked the State government to update it about the status of a drive to evict encroachers from central Assam’s Lumding Reserve Forest on November 1.
Hearing a petition by former MLA Shiladitya Dev, Judges Manish Choudhury and N. Kotiswar Singh said the State government had acknowledged the encroachment of 1.10 hectares under the reserve forest.
“…the State authorities have prepared a plan of eviction which they intend to implement in a phase-wise manner during October 2021 to February 2022,” the court said, seeking the update on action taken in the first phase for five days from October to November.
