A month after a violent eviction drive that claimed two lives, the Assam Government has taken the counselling route to remove encroachers from State-owned land.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the encroachers of the Lumding Reserve Forest in central Assam were now on the Government’s radar after those in northern Assam’s Gorukhuti.
On September 23, the police shot two Bengali Muslims when an eviction drive in the Dhalpur area of Gorukhuti turned violent. One of the two killed was a minor.
‘PFI triggered trouble’
“Discussions with the settlers and leaders of minority organisations had preceded the Gorukhuti eviction drive but a few members of the PFI [Popular Front of India] triggered trouble. The local authorities have now been counselling them on vacating the land and applying for rehabilitation if they fulfil certain criteria,” the Chief Minister told journalists on Friday.
The central Assam authorities were likewise appealing to the encroachers of Lumding Reserve Forest to vacate. The landless among them were also being counselled on applying for alternative land under relevant laws, he stated.
“We have found out that the encroachers of the reserve forest were settled by three-four big traders to cultivate ginger. This cannot happen in a reserve forest,” he noted. The landless encroachers could apply only to the authorities of the district they were originally from.
‘NRC won’t affect Census’
The impasse over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would have no bearing on the Census expected to be undertaken in 2022, Mr. Sarma asserted.
The updated complete draft of the NRC was published in August 2019, leaving out 19.06 lakh of some 3.3 crore applicants in the State.
“We have been maintaining that there is no link between the NRC and the Census, which we want to be conducted,” he added.