Guwahati, Nov 29: An eviction drive was launched in Assam’s Nagaon district on Saturday to clear encroachment from 795 hectare of reserved forest land, where around 1,500 families lived, officials said.
The drive was started in the Lutimari area in the morning amid heavy deployment of security, they said.
Notices were issued to the encroachers three months ago, asking them to vacate within two months. They had requested an additional month to vacate, and the district administration agreed to it, an official said.
Over 1,100 families, living in both pucca and kuccha houses, have already left with their belongings, dismantling the illegally-built structures, he said.
The remaining houses are being demolished in the drive, he added.
Some residents claimed that they had been living in the area for over 40 years and were unaware that it was forest land.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had earlier claimed that over 160 sq km of land had been cleared of encroachment since he took over in May 2021.
Over 50,000 people have been evicted as a result of such anti-encroachment drives, according to him.
After a brief pause, the drives resumed from June 16, with over 5,000 families evicted since then.
Most of the displaced people are from the Bengali-speaking Muslim community, who claim that their ancestors had settled in the areas where the eviction drives are being carried out, after their land in the ‘char’ or riverine areas was washed away due to erosion by the Brahmaputra. (PTI)
