Editorial

Eviction must continue

While the Gauhati High Court has ordered a stay on the current eviction drive launched by the government to clear some land demarcated for indigenous tribal communities at Sonapur

Sentinel Digital Desk

While the Gauhati High Court has ordered a stay on the current eviction drive launched by the government to clear some land demarcated for indigenous tribal communities at Sonapur on the outskirts of Guwahati city from the clutches of encroachers of doubtful antecedents, the Goalpara district administration must be hailed for its resolve to conduct a massive eviction drive to save the Bandarmatha Reserved Forest from the grip of encroachers. As has been reported, over 55 hectares of forest land at Bandarmatha has been occupied by about 200 families of doubtful antecedents, and a series of notices issued by the authorities to these encroachers to vacate the forest area have yielded no result so far. The decision to evict the encroachers of Bandarmatha Reserved Forest has been reportedly taken following an order of the Gauhati High Court on a suo moto PIL of 2022 asking the authorities to remove the encroachers who have been sitting on a crucial elephant corridor. Needless to say, most of the encroachers across Assam—whether in forest land, land belonging to Xatra institutions, land under tribal belts and blocks, or land belonging to various public institutions—have their roots in erstwhile East Bengal, erstwhile East Pakistan, and present-day Bangladesh. It is now beyond any doubt that the influx from that territory, which began soon after the birth of the Muslim League in 1906, has been part of a larger and well-drawn conspiracy to cause a demographic invasion of Assam. The Brahma Committee had a few years ago clearly stated how large tracts of land across Assam are under encroachment, mostly by this category of people. The Committee had also recommended eviction of these encroachers. There is also a very crucial Supreme Court observation of July 2005 (while scrapping the notorious IMDT Act) that it is the bounden duty of the state (read Union of India) to protect its territory from what it termed an external aggression by way of a demographic infiltration.