To make space for Himanta’s ‘dream project’, demolition drive restarts in Assam town that saw 2 deaths in 2021

In September 2021, an eviction drive in the area saw approximately 1,300 families, most of them Bengali Muslim, evicted from around 10,000 bighas of government land. Work on the Garukhuti project started soon afterwards.

Mohammed Safer Ali was among those who had their houses demolished during the 2021 eviction drive. After that, he said his family had set up a makeshift house just outside the area where the agriculture project has been set up, around 2.5 kilometres from where their earlier house was. On Monday, that house was also demolished.

“For the last 15 days, we were being told by administration representatives that we will get one bigha of land somewhere. They have been telling us to take a token so that we go there and be allotted. But we have been telling them that we want to see the land first. Some of these places are 60 kilometres from here, and we want to see them before being shifted there,” he said.

Darrang District Commissioner Munindra Nath Ngatey told The Indian Express that the administration is “shifting” the evicted families to land identified in areas such as Dalgaon, Arimari, Shyampur, Magurmari and Kalai char, where each household is being given one bigha land for relocation. In February 2022, the Assam government had planned to relocate over 2,000 evicted families to Dalgaon, which is also in Darrang district. The Gauhati High Court has also ordered the government to relocate the evicted families.

“There were almost 2,300 families in the area. Almost 1,750 had already been shifted earlier. Then the process had to stop because of elections. Now, after elections, some people have instigated the remaining households to not move. We have tried to make them understand that the majority of the people have shifted and we need to clear this land for the government’s project. We sent 15 tractors today to carry the belongings of the people to the allocated areas,” Ngatey said.