GOALPARA, July 11: A day before a scheduled eviction drive to clear encroachment on 1,040 bighas of land in the Paikan Reserve Forest in Assam’s Goalpara district, about 95 per cent of alleged illegal settlers have already moved out from there, an official said on Friday.
The district administration is geared up to lend its support to the forest department for a smooth anti-encroachment operation, he said.
The eviction drive, which was scheduled to be carried out on Friday, was postponed by a day, keeping in mind the Friday prayer in the Muslim-majority area, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said.
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“The district administration will look after ensuring the law and order situation, and we have completed preparations for it,” Goalpara district commissioner (DC) Khanindra Choudhury told PTI.
He also said, “Around 90-95 per cent of the illegal settlers have already moved out from the site, dismantling their establishments and carrying away their belongings.”
Only the brick structures or structures which cannot be moved are still there, he said.
“Security and other arrangements from our end have been completed to ensure smooth operation,” the DC added.
Goalpara Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Tejas Mariswamy had said earlier that the eviction drive would clear encroachment on around 1,040 bighas of land in the Paikan Reserve Forest of Krishnai Forest Range.
“There are 1,080 families who have encroached on forest land, and we had asked them to vacate the area in November-December last year. We again served them notices last month to leave the area by July 10,” he added. Since 2023, the administration has cleared encroachments on 650 hectares of land across four forest ranges.
“Of this area, human habitation was in 200 hectares and farming was done in the remaining 450 hectares,” Mariswamy had said.
Notably, encroachments on about 3,500 bighas of land (around 1,160 acres), affecting around 1,100 families, in Charuwa Bakra, Chirakuta and Santoshpur villages under the Chapar circle in neighbouring Dhubri district were cleared during a drive on Tuesday.
The anti-encroachment exercise was undertaken to hand over land to Adani group to set up a power plant.
Alleged encroachers had damaged excavators and tried to attack police personnel during the eviction drive, prompting security forces to resort to a baton charge to disperse the mob.
Last month, Sarma had visited the site for the proposed power plant, and announced that a 3,400 MW thermal power plant would be established there.
Sarma, at a press conference in Guwahati on Thursday, had asserted that eviction drives would continue in the state with over 25,000 acres of land having been cleared of encroachment in the last four years.
The CM said that he would hold another press meeting next week and furnish all data related to eviction drives since he became the CM in May 2021.
“We will have another eviction drive on Saturday in Goalpara. The Gauhati High Court has asked us to clear forest land. It only said that we should provide drinking water and other essential items to the evicted people,” he added.
The Congress, however, has criticised the eviction drives and promised that all Indian citizens, who have been evicted from land during the BJP rule, will be compensated if the opposition party comes to power in the state. (PTI)
