High Court upholds Assam govt’s eviction drive in reserve forests, calls for prevention of ‘illegal entry’

The court was hearing a challenge by 59 residents of Negheribill in Assam’s Golaghat district, who had been issued notices by the forest department to vacate the land, part of the Doyang Reserve Forest, within seven days. Because of their ongoing challenge, the High Court had issued a temporary stay on eviction of these families, but 146 other families from the area were evicted through a demolition drive on August 8.

In a hearing on Monday, the bench disposed of the appeal, saying, “There cannot be any question of permitting any encroacher to reside within the demarcated reserved forest land.”

It said that past “inaction” by authorities or the appellants’ stand that they were residing there in “houses constructed out of the government fund long time ago” do not stand as arguments against eviction.

“Even if, for some inaction on the part of the forest officials, some persons in the past were allowed entry in the reserved forest area, who continued to stay there, they would have no enforceable right against the government when such eviction drive is undertaken… Even assuming that some of the houses constructed out of the government fund were the residential places of the appellants, but if they fall/fell in the reserved forest area, that need to be removed, which would have only been in consonance of the relevant rules and regulations with respect to the forest,” the order said.

The court said that the affidavit submitted by the state indicated that the appellants and others were carrying out betel nut farming and had set up fisheries in the area, which it called “shocking” and called for “total revamp/restoration of the State mechanism to prevent any such infiltration in the reserved forest areas”.

“In this context, we would want the State to ensure that a proper check mechanism is put in place, which would prevent any illegal entry in the reserved forest area. It could be by way of checking the entry points, putting barbed wires at porous borders and setting up of functional check posts. All these would become effective, if and only if the officers/persons managing such check posts do their job honestly as also efficiently,” the order said, directing the State to come up with a regulation in that regard.

“… if ever it is found that such illegal entry in the reserved forest area is because of collusion of forest officials, or other ministerial staff, necessary penal action should be initiated against them. In fact, if the State is serious about preserving the pristine forests/reserved forests of the State, it should come up with a regulation whereby even the officers and ministerial staff in the forest department would be held responsible for any unauthorised/illegal entry in such reserved forests,” it said.

It also said that in the absence of an existing protocol on conducting evictions in reserve forest areas, if such an exercise is conducted in the future, the settlers should be given 15 days to “explain under what circumstances they had set up their residence inside the reserved forest area where any non-forest activity or their presence attracts penal offence” and another 15 days to vacate the area.

According to the Assam government, 29 lakh bighas of land in the state’s reserve forests have been encroached, of which one lakh bighas have been freed of encroachment through its eviction drives over the past few years.