Drive to shift 600 families in Darrang

Guwahati, May 21 (PTI) The Assam government is carrying out a drive to shift nearly 600 families, displaced by an eviction drive two years ago, from their temporary settlement at Gorukhuti in Darrang district, a senior official said on Tuesday.
    The affected families, however, claimed that 620 houses have already been destroyed at two locations of Gorukhuti and the exercise is still underway.
    Darrang District Commissioner Munindra Nath Ngatey told PTI that the families are "not evicted but being shifted" to a new place from Sipajhar revenue circle to 'char' (riverine islands) areas of nearby Dalgaon revenue circle.
    "During the eviction drive of 2021, around 2,300 families were displaced and they started living in temporary houses in some other areas of Gorukhuti. We have been telling them to shift to other places designated by the administration since then," he added.
    Ngatey said the administration identified Magurmari, Shyampur, Kalaichar and Arimari 'chars' for permanent settlement of these displaced families.
    "Most of the 2,300 families had shifted, but only 550 were left out. Since yesterday, we are shifting them also. We have provided tractors to shift their goods," he claimed.
     In order to avoid a repetition of the 2021 scenario, a heavy police force was arranged to carry out the eviction drive to shift the people.
    Aftab Ali, an affected youth, said: "Since yesterday, 620 houses have been completely destroyed by bulldozers. We have lost many valuables also. We went to see the new places a few days ago, but there is nothing except river sand."
    He claimed that they will not be able to do any farming, which is the mainstay of Gorukhuti people, in the newly designated place due to the presence of excessive sand accumulated from Brahmaputra.
    Around 1,200-1,400 houses, mostly belonging to Bengali-speaking Muslims, were razed to the ground on September 20 and 23 of 2021 in Dhalpur I, II and III villages of Gorukhuti, leaving over 7,000 people homeless.
    Two persons were killed in police firing and over 20 people were injured, including policemen, during the massive eviction drive at Gorukhuti, where the Assam government initiated a multi-dimensional agriculture project.
    Asked if these people face threat of eviction from the new places also sometime in future, Ngatey said: "Nobody is going to evict them. Those places are presently non-cadastral villages, where no survey has been done."
    However, the government will start surveying the 'chars' in Mission Basundhara 3.0, a flagship programme to give land rights to indigenous people, and they will be offered permanent settlement accordingly, he claimed.
    In November last year, Assam Agriculture Minister Atul Bora said the agriculture project in Gorukhuti has not yielded the desired results with several Gir cows brought from Gujarat dying due to illness.
    In March 2023, he had informed the Assam Assembly that 300 Gir cows brought in the third phase from Gujarat through the NDDB were declared "inferior quality" by doctors and all of them were returned without costing anything to the exchequer.
    Earlier, the Assam government had allocated Rs 9.6 crore in 2021-22 budget and Rs 6.5 crore in 2022-23 to implement modern farming techniques and scientific animal rearing practices across 77,420 bighas of land at Gorukhuti in Sipajhar area.
    In March 2023, Bora had told the Assam Assembly that the government earned Rs 1.51 crore, excluding income from animal husbandry and milk production, from the agriculture project against allocation of Rs 16.1 crore in two years.
    Apart from milk products, the project also produces different types of seasonal vegetables, strawberry, pulses, fruits, corn, mustard, pigs and various other goods.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)