500 families to be removed from Lakhimpur forest land

Guwahati: Over 500 families will be evicted from around 5 sqkm land of the Pabha reserve forest in Assam’s Lakhimpur district on Tuesday. The reserve forest is spread over 46 sqkm, nearly 15 km towards the south of the NH-15.
According to the district administration, 507 families belonging to the Muslim community have been illegally living in the forest land.
An official of the Lakhimpur forest division said the families had filed a petition before the district authority, seeking land rights in the forest area under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
“We had challenged the petition as they do not belong to any tribal community. In September, the district authority finally rejected their petition and allowed us to initiate steps to free the forest land,” the officer added.
The Act recognizes the rights of the forest dwelling tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers to forest resources, on which these communities were dependent for a variety of needs, including livelihood, habitation and other socio-cultural requirements.
The forest official added that most of the house owners live in different places. “They have either given their houses on rent or hired caretakers for them,” the officer said.
The official added that the families were served notices in September last year.
Lakhimpur, superintendent of police, Bedanta Madhab Rajkhowa said 600 personnel of state police and CRPF have been deployed for the exercise and a mock drill was conducted by the forces on Sunday.
“We are prepared to conduct the eviction drive in a smooth and peaceful manner as far as possible,” he added.
The forest was recognized as a reserve forest by the government in 1941. The total geographical area of forest was over 49 sqkm during the time of recognition. A total of 3.08 sqkm was de-reserved by the government in 1964 for settlement.
The dense forest area in the reserve forest was over 8 sqkm in 1977. The reserve forest lost its dense forest area completely due to human interference in 1997. At present, 4.5 sqkm of it is under encroachment.
Nearly 3,000 hectares of government and forest lands have been cleared from encroachment in the state after the chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government took over in May, 2021.
The first and major eviction drive was conducted at Dholpur in Darrang district, around 55 km from Guwahati, in September 2021.