450 families evicted from reserve forest in Assam

Nearly 450 families, who had illegally occupied part of the Bandarmatha Reserve Forest in Assam’s Goalpara district have been evicted during a drive by the state authorities, officials said on Tuesday.

Goalpara divisional forest office Tejas Mariswamy said the authorities had issued notices to the illegal occupants in the reserved forest area earlier this month to leave the area, following which almost all of them had moved out.

The families there, comprising around 2,000 people, had been residing there for many years and around 55 hectares of forest land had been encroached upon by them.

On Monday, many illegal structures, including houses, mosques and other buildings that had been erected in the area, were razed using bulldozers and other earth moving vehicles. Many security and forest personnel were present in the area to prevent any untoward incident.

Officials said that the eviction was carried out following a Gauhati high court order to clear all protected forest areas in Goalpara from encroachments. The forests in the district are one of the hotspots for man-elephant conflict.

“Eviction and removal of illegal structures will continue on Wednesday as well. Once the area is cleared, a large plantation drive will be carried out in the reserve forest, spread across 118 hectares,” Mariswamy said.

Meanwhile, 150 families who had encroached on land reserved for tribals in Kachutali area of Sonapur revenue circle in Kamrup (Metropolitan) district were evicted on Tuesday.

The area had witnessed violent events during the first phase of the eviction drive earlier this month. Two persons were killed and 35 others, including police and administrative personnel, were injured after a clash broke out between encroachers and security personnel while evictions were underway here on September 12.