Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma Wednesday visited a site in Sonapur where an eviction exercise last September turned violent leaving two people dead and many more injured. He was at the site to inspect the area, which the state government has now chosen as a site to relocate the Assam Police’s 10th Battalion from its current site in Guwahati.
On September 9 last year, the Assam government had conducted an eviction drive in Kachutali village in the Sonapur revenue circle – where most of the residents are Bengali Muslims –on the grounds that the area in which they had built the houses was under the notified tribal belt of South Kamrup. Under Assam’s land regulations the sale and purchase, lease, settlement in notified tribal belts and blocks is restricted to ‘Protected Classes’ which includes Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Santhals, tea tribes and Gorkhas.
During the course of the eviction drive, the district administration had cleared 1,050 bighas of land and around 650 families had been displaced. While tribal groups in the area had hailed the eviction, they now find themselves opposing the government’s move to set up a police battalion there.
The plan had first come to light in March this year, when Finance Minister Ajanta Neog presented the state government’s budget for the current financial year. Announcing this decision, she had said: “This will provide a safety net to the tribal people from encroachment of their land in that tribal belt. Additionally, this will give an opportunity to the government to develop a world-class central business district with modern infrastructure,” the minister had said
During his visit to the site Wednesday, Sarma said that setting up the battalion in the site would “keep it secure from future encroachments.” He also claimed that the government would use “not more than 100 bighas” of the over 1,000 bighas of land in which evictions were cleared for the battalion.
“Because this is tribal belt and block land, we think that the land should either be given to landless tribals or that it should be used to set up some project that will benefit the tribal people here, like a university, a medical college, or even a museum on tribal culture. Our people will not be benefitted in any way by a security establishment here. We know because there are already so many security establishments which have been set up here and the people have not benefited from them. Instead, tribal land is only going to decrease because of this,” said Manik Ronghang, president of the Tribal People’s Confederation Dimoria, referring to existing Air Force Station, SSB CRPF and ITBP campuses in Sonapur.
Echoing the appeal for alternative uses of the land, Bodo Kachari Youth Students’ Union Jiten Mahilary, said, “We had been demanding that the land be freed from encroachment but now this move is like the government itself encroaching that tribal land. The police battalion is already there in Guwahati. If it shifts here, what is going to happen to that land?”
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In apparent response to such concerns, Sarma told reporters Wednesday that the government would try to work towards such initiatives on the land remaining after the construction of the battalion but that “we will first secure the land and once the battalion comes, the land will be properly secured”.
In the meantime, some of the families whose homes had been destroyed in the demolition continue to live in the area, either in tarpaulin sheet structures or in a nearby mosque.
“The chief minister came today and told us to leave so we don’t have any options anymore. We will have to leave but we don’t have anywhere to go because we are landless,” said Harun Rashed, whose family continues to live in a tarpaulin structure there.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
