HT Correspondent
SIVASAGAR, July 18: The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Thursday staged a two-hour sit-in demonstration in front of the Sivasagar Labour Office, protesting against the eviction drives carried out by the state government and demanding the fulfilment of a 17-point charter of demands.
A memorandum in this regard was submitted to the Government of Assam through the Deputy Commissioner.
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Leading the protest, CPI state secretary Kanak Gogoi alleged that chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was conducting eviction drives to hand over thousands of bighas of land to corporate entities including Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani, Baba Ramdev, and the Tata Group.
Gogoi claimed the evictions were aimed at raising election funds and were being first carried out in minority-dominated areas, before targeting tribal regions, particularly those inhabited by Ahom settlers.
He said around 55,000 bighas of land were planned to be transferred to corporate groups and demanded that evicted land should instead be allocated to landless people.
He also urged the Chief Minister to follow Supreme Court guidelines and treat people humanely during eviction operations.
The party further demanded that if any Bangladeshi citizens were among the evicted, they should be handed over to the Government of Bangladesh.
The CPI’s memorandum highlighted the issue of unemployment, stating that over 36 lakh educated youth remain jobless in Assam and accused the state government of lacking any concrete employment policy.
The party accused the BJP of building its organisational strength from the grassroots level by raising corporate funds, influencing constitutional institutions like the Election Commission, CBI, and ED, and using administrative and propaganda machinery to its advantage.
It called upon opposition parties to unite and mount a street-level struggle against the alleged anti-people policies of the BJP-led government.
The CPI also criticised the government for allegedly obstructing dialogue with ULFA (I) by attacking its camps in Myanmar and demanded that the insurgency issue be treated as a political problem rather than a law and order issue.
Among other demands, the CPI called for granting tribal status under Article 371(A) to six ethnic groups, improving the state’s irrigation infrastructure to enable multi-crop farming, and conducting a high-level probe into the alleged cattle theft and sale scam at Garukhuti.
CPI district secretary Mani Buragohain, youth leaders Ajay Bora and Riku Bargohain, Mahila Sangha district president Mallika Begum, and several party workers participated in the protest.
