Assam: Homes of 1,400 Bengali-origin Muslim families bulldozed in Dhubri
The Assam Power Distribution Company Limited, which is heading the project, has already been allotted the land, Nath added.
Residents affected by the demolitions told Scroll that nearly 10,000 Bengali-origin Muslims, who had been living in the area for at least three to four decades, were displaced from Chirakuta 1 and 2, Charuakhara Jungle Block and Santeshpur villages under the Chapar revenue circle in Dhubri.
'These are erosion-hit people who lost their ancestral homes due to the Brahmaputra,' Towfique Hussian, an affected resident, told Scroll.
On March 30, the district administration submitted a proposal to convert the Village Grazing Land, a category of government land designated for cattle grazing, for the solar power project, according to minutes of a district-level land advisory meeting held on April 2.
The Assam Power Distribution Company Limited had acquired around 1,289 acres of government land for the plant.
According to the district administration, it had issued eviction notices in advance and made daily public announcements asking residents to vacate and dismantle their homes before Sunday.
Police personnel and bulldozers began arriving at the eviction sites on Monday.
'Many of the residents have already moved their belongings out of fear…Everyday people were moving,' Hussian said. 'Those who did not move earlier, their homes were demolished on Tuesday.'
Some residents protested against the eviction drive and threw stones at the bulldozers, damaging three of them. The police lathi-charged the protesters.
Akhil Gogoi, independent MLA and chief of Raijor Dal, arrived at the eviction site on Tuesday. He told those displaced that he would request Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to allot 165 acres for their rehabilitation.
Gogoi was subsequently detained by police for a brief period.
'This eviction is illegal and unconstitutional,' he later said. 'The matter is pending before the Gauhati High Court. The Himanta Biswa Sarma government is demolishing homes unlawfully.'
Gogoi claimed that such evictions were being conducted against Muslims to capture Hindu votes. 'The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government is targeting the minorities just because they are Muslims,' he added.
Later in the day, Sarma said the state government will carry out another eviction drive on July 10 in the Paikar area, a reserved forest area in Goalpara district.
'Our aim is clear the encroached land and use them for the public,' the chief minister told reporters. 'We are with the indigenous people of Assam while Akhil Gogoi stands for a particular community. That's our poltical ideology. We will keep doing our work.'
About 400 residents from the Charuabakhra Jangal Block village, who were living on the government land after losing their homes due to erosion caused by the Brahmaputra river, had moved the Gauhati High Court against the eviction notices in April.
The residents said that the action of the district authorities violated the judgement laid down by the Supreme Court in November.
The case is still pending in the High Court.
In November, the Supreme Court had held as illegal the practice of demolishing properties of persons accused of crimes as a punitive measure. It added that processes must be followed before removing allegedly illegal encroachments.
This is the fourth major eviction carried out in the last 30 days.
On June 16, Goalpara authorities demolished the homes of 690 families, all of them belonging to Bengali-origin Muslims, who were living on an allegedly encroached land in the Hasila Beel, a wetland.
The families told Scroll that many of them were living in the area before it was declared a wetland.
Ninety-three families of Bengali-origin Muslims were evicted on June 30 in Assam's Nalbari district during an anti-encroachment drive on nearly 150 acres of village grazing reserve land in the Barkhetri revenue circle.
On Thursday, around 220 families were evicted during an anti-encroachment drive in upper Assam's Lakhimpur district. The district authorities said the families were living on 77 acres of land at four locations, including three Village Grazing Reserves.
Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, more than 10,620 families – the majority of them Muslim – have been ousted from government land, between 2016 and August 2024, according to data provided by the state revenue and disaster management department.
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