“Where will we go from here? My father had come from Nagaon district around 40 years ago, but I was born here. We were brought here during the 1980s to protect the forest land from encroachment from Nagaland,” said Ali Kazi, who also received an eviction notice.He claimed that most of the alleged encroachers’ previous generation was settled in the forest area by the Janata Party government, headed by ex-CM Golap Borbora, in 1978-79 and the first AGP government, which came to power in 1985.Notably, the assembly was informed in March that almost 83,000 hectares of land belonging to Assam were being occupied by four neighbouring states.It was also stated that Nagaland captured the highest amount of land in Assam — 59,490.21 hectares.Kazi claimed, “We have been cooperating with the authorities in this eviction drive. We requested them to settle us somewhere else, but they refused. We now have no option but to stay under tents. We are not even given drinking water; forget about food. It’s very inhuman.”Another eviction victim, Mamtaj Ali, asked, “If we were illegal settlers, how did we get electricity connections? Why did the government open schools and give us JJM connections? We were also given houses under PM Awas Yojana.”When asked about these government infrastructure, a senior official of the forest department accepted that such facilities were provided by the authorities, and some of these installations were made even after 2016 when the BJP came to power for the first time in Assam.”I do not know why these were sanctioned and established in this area. These were made before I came here,” he added.There were mosques and madrassa for people belonging to the Muslim community, while churches were set up by the Bodo people, the official said.For carrying out the eviction drive across 12 villages, the authorities divided the entire area into nine zones and conducted a survey accordingly, he added.”An extensive land survey of around 30 villages of the Rengma Reserve Forest was done.
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