More than 1,100 families, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims, have been evicted from forest land in Assam’s Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat districts during a two-day demolition drive, officials and media reports said.
On Sunday, 18 October, authorities pulled down homes of more than 500–600 families in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest in Nagaon. The previous day, 547 families were removed under heavy security: 336 in Nagaon, 152 in Hojai and 59 in Golaghat. Many residents left with their belongings before excavators arrived, and no untoward incidents were reported. Officials indicated the operation may continue.
Residents of Lutumari rejected the government’s claim that they were encroachers. They said their elders had worked as labourers for the Forest Department and were settled there by the state under the colonial-era taungya system. Abdul Noor, whose house was demolished, said his family received land in 1974 and that more than 10 mosques, some decades old, were also razed.
The families had challenged the eviction in the Gauhati High Court but received no relief. In June the court directed them to vacate within 30 days, ruling that the public interest in protecting forests outweighed private claims to live inside reserves, and ordered power supply cut after the deadline.
A separate clearance in the greater Lutumari area last November affected about 1,700 families. In Hojai, 152 households were demolished in the Jamuna-Maudanga Reserve Forest after an earlier phase earlier this year. In Golaghat, the final 59 families at No. 2 Negheribil were removed following a court ruling in the state’s favour.
The state government maintains the drives are intended to reclaim forest and government land from encroachment. Data compiled from official sources indicate that roughly 19,000 families, most of them Muslim, have been evicted from government land during a decade of BJP rule in Assam.
