Gaurav Das
Guwahati: The Supreme Court’s order on September 30 on Assam’s demolitions and its contempt of court notice against the Himanta Biswa Sarma government’s bulldozer drive have come as relief to some in the state. But many wonder if Sarma’s relentless pitting of indigenous residents against purported Bangladeshi immigrants will let up ahead of the 2026 Assam assembly polls.
On September 9, government officials and police from the Kamrup (metropolitan) district administration arrived at Kachutoli village in Sonapur about 20 kilometres from the city. Kachutoli is home to around 150 families, mostly Bengali Muslims. Most of them were evicted from their houses over the claim that they were encroaching upon 100 bighas of government land.
According to Sonapur Circle Officer Nitul Khatanair, as per a The Times of India report on September 10, under the Sonapur Revenue Circle there are 145 villages out of which 122 villages are under the tribal belt. Officials also cited that three villages namely Kachutoli Pathar, Chamta Pathar, and Burni have been encroached upon by people belonging to the non-protected classes.
Kachutoli Pathar comes within the South Kamrup (Guwahati) Tribal Belt, which was formed with a notification (Letter No. RD/74/46/172 dated February 27, 1950) by the then government, encompassing around 301,104 bighas of land and 236 villages under the Sonapur, Palashbari and Chandrapur Revenue Circles.
Tribal belt areas have a majority of local indigenous and other backward communities which were notified under the Chapter 10 of the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation Act of 1886. This act was amended in 1947.
To protect the land interests of these communities from illegal encroachers by other groups was the intention of the Act.
In Sonapur, the Karbi tribe is predominant. Other tribal communities like Bodos and Sonowal-Kachari are also present along with Nepalis and tea-tribe communities.
After the September 9 visit by officials and police, the houses of locals dubbed ‘illegal settlers’ were marked with red tape, creating panic over a possible demolition. On September 12, violence broke out between villagers and the police, allegedly when the authorities damaged the villagers’ granary with a bulldozer.
Police are learned to have fired on the crowd. Two Muslim men, Haider Ali and 19-year-old Zubahir Ali, died. Thirty people – both villagers and district administration officials – were injured.
Mainstream news reports decried a ‘land jihad’ – an imaginary conspiracy by Muslim settlers from Bangladesh to occupy land.
This was amplified by Sarma himself who said that “the settlers’ slogans resembled those used in Bangladesh during the August political unrest there”.
September 16 was fixed as a deadline for the villagers at Kachutoli to vacate their homes. Most left and the village was almost emptied.
Post evictions, around 47 affected families approached the Supreme Court by filing a contempt petition seeking proceedings against officials involved in the eviction drive for “wilful violation of the Court’s interim order dated September 17, 2024.”
On September 17 the apex court had said, “Till next date there shall be no demolitions without seeking leave of this court. However, such order would not be applicable for unauthorised constructions on public streets, footpaths, abutting railway lines or public spaces.”
The petition also mentioned a previous order of September 20 passed by the Gauhati high court. Back then the Advocate General of Assam in an undertaking had said that “no action would be taken against the petitioners until their representations were disposed of”.
The petition noted:
“They were not given any opportunity to defend themselves, and the lack of notice has deprived them of their homes and livelihoods, in violation of their rights under Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution.
The petition, according to a Bar and Bench report published on September 30 cited that the demolition order violates the principles of natural justice and the right to a fair hearing.
A bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan “while issuing notice returnable within three weeks, also ordered that the status quo shall be maintained in the meantime.”
The court directed that “no demolition shall take place across the country without the court’s prior permission.”
On October 1 The Hindu reported that the “Supreme Court will lay down guidelines for all citizens on the issue of demolition of properties and reserved its verdict on pleas which have alleged that properties, including of those accused of crime, were being demolished in several states.”
The petitioners claimed that “they were living on the land by virtue of power of attorney agreements executed by the original pattadars (landholders). While they do not claim ownership of the land, they contend that their occupation is legally valid and recognized by these agreements.”
A.R. Bhuyan, a Guwahati-based advocate who represented the Kachutoli Pathar victims, told The Wire, “The case was taken up on humanitarian grounds looking at the financial woes of the victims and their present. I want to say that in Sarma’s Assam there are rights for animals but not for humans. This is a deliberate and intentional move by the BJP against Muslims.”
Bhuyan highlighted that evicted people have no place to live in. “On September 29, a 27-year-old man was looking for shelter after eviction. He was wandering in the Morigaon district when he was killed by a stray rhinoceros. Such evictions must stop. These are acts of inhumanity.”
Many evictees have tried to live among the debris of their destroyed homes.
Ainuddin Ahmed, adviser of the All-Assam Muslim Students’ Union (AAMSU) told The Wire, “If evictions have to be carried out it should be based upon proper discussion and by following of laid down guidelines. Focus must be on women and children. But nothing of that sort has happened. Sarma should observe his Raj Dharma.”
On September 25, The Indian Express reported on “[a]nother eviction drive in Goalpara district, where 450 families, accounting for around 2,000 people, were evicted. According to officials, they were illegally occupying 55 hectares of the 118-hectare Bandarmatha Reserve Forest, and that the eviction exercise had been carried out in line with a Gauhati High Court order to clear all protected forest areas in Goalpara – a hotspot of man-elephant conflict – from encroachment.”
Akash Doley the chief organising secretary of the central committee of KMSS, a farmers’ organisation, and a resident of Sonapur told The Wire that he found that a few settlers at Kachutoli had land deeds and revenue papers dating back to 1923 and 1950.
“Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016 the Bengali-speaking Muslim community has been at the receiving end of communal politics. They are targets for evictions as evictions itself are a political tool,” said Doley.
Doley said that Sarma is keen to retain tribal votes. “Most of the tribal groups support Sarma thanks to delimitation. There is also a good chunk of Bengali-Hindu populace who are mostly Schedule Castes. Previously Sonapur was under the Dispur constituency but after delimitation it has become a SC seat instead of Schedule Tribe,” he added.
Almost two years ago, in September 2021, the Dhalpur eviction drive made news when footage emerged of a local cameraperson stomping on the body of 33-year-old Moinul Haque, who had been shot dead by police. Almost six hundred Muslim families lost their homes.
In this cartoon by Nituparna Rajbongshi, there is a play on the word ‘cameraman’ in Assamese. It is written as ‘ca-mora-man (mora means dead in Assamese).’
On May 21 of this year over 500 families were evicted for an agricultural project at Gorukhuti.
A Times of India report published on May 22 said, “A total of 1750 families out of a total of over 2300 families who were illegally occupying the land received one bigha of land each at Magurmari, Moirabari, Shyampur and Kalaigaon in the district.”
Debabrata Saikia, the leader of opposition at the state assembly told this reporter that the evictions are a political stunt to polarise votes ahead of the 2026 polls. “It is a show to tell the people of Assam that Sarma’s government is working and delivering. The Supreme Court’s order on September 30 is proof that it has taken cognisance of the issue. He has been doing this since 2016. The government had to compensate and rehabilitate the evictees according to the court’s direction.”
In May 2022, at Silsako in Guwahati, nearly 100 Assamese and other ethnic communities suddenly found themselves declared encroachers and were evicted to enforce the Water Bodies Act, 2008, which aims to make Guwahati “flood-free”.
Similar drives evicted 300 families in February 27, 2023, and some others in September 2023.
The motive was to free over 150 bighas of land allegedly encroached upon. Since Silsako is a beel or a natural waterbody, it needed to be protected, the government said.
The Wire reached out to Gayatri Bori of Silsako Paror Ussed Pratiruddhi Raej, a collective of some Silsako evictees, whose house was demolished.
“During a meeting with Sarma on September 8 we demanded that we should be given the total land value or land for land. He tried to assure us and told us that he will look at it…But the state administration should have done background checks and proper guidelines should have been followed. The government has pushed us back by 50 years,” said Bori, who now lives in a rented house with her family.
On September 8 the Assam Tribune reported, “Sarma guaranteed the affected families of financial compensation in the tune of Rs 10 lakh for those with RCC constructions, Rs 5 lakh for Assam-type houses, and Rs 1 lakh for Kaccha houses.”
Akhil Ranjan Dutta, professor of political science at Gauhati University told The Wire that the government needs to follow the letter of the law in evictions. “One cannot be deprived of the rights protected by law even when one is evicted for alleged encroachment.”
Echoing this train of thought, Suprakash Talukdar, state secretary CPI(M)’s Assam state committee said, “Eviction has definitely been used as a political tool in Assam. The BJP here has selectively targeted Muslims, particularly those of Bengali origin, for ruthless eviction. Their aim is to polarise based on religion, centring on the issue of eviction.”
Other instances include the September 2016 drive at Bandardubi in Nagaon district carried out as a result of BJP leader Mrinal Saikia’s petition at Gauhati high court alleging that the village was situated in a buffer zone, and to stop the poaching of the one-horned rhinoceros as the area was close to the NH-37 near the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve. Two persons died in a stampede caused by the eviction.
Around 300-plus houses were demolished, and around 1500 people were evicted from the villages of Deosursang, Palkhowa and with Bandardubi with the majority of the evictees being Bengali Muslims.
In November 2022, an eviction was carried out at Lumding reserve forest in Hojai and around 500 families lost their houses to clear 5,000 hectares of land.
On December 19, 2022, another eviction drive was seen at Batadrava also in Nagaon district, to clear 1,000 bighas of land in the presence of around 700 hundred police personal from Assam Police and CRPF. Three hundred people lost their homes.
“Settlements in floodplains and valleys surrounding the riverine plains often transcend fixities of location. Can a bulldozer become a symbol of ‘just’ order in such a milieu?” asked Gorky Chakraborty, associate professor, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata.
source : thewire