Guwahati, The Gauhati High Court directed families living in Doyang and Nambor reserve forests in Golaghat district to vacate within seven days, and the state government to set up a proper mechanism to prevent such settlements in the future.
A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhury, on Monday said the families living in the forest area must vacate by Sunday, and if they fail to do so, the state government can evict them.
The court was hearing petitions, filed by 74 people, challenging the notices by the district authority asking them to vacate the land within seven days. They claimed the notices were in contravention of certain provisions of the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation, 1886, and the Assam Land Policy, 2019, as also the Supreme Court’s order of December 13, 2024.
The HC had, on August 5, given 10 days to the petitioners to submit documentary evidence of their land rights or vacate the forest area.
The bench on Monday said the court has already given more time to vacate the forest.
It directed the government that in case of an eviction drive in the future, a notice of a “reasonable time of 15 days and a further period of 15 days for exiting the place” should be given.
“A proper check mechanism needs to be put in place, which will prevent any illegal entry into the reserve forests. This could be in the way of checking the entry points, putting barbed wires at porous borders and setting up functional checkpoints,” it said.
The court observed that all such measures can be effective only if officials concerned and persons managing the check posts do their job honestly and efficiently.
“If any illegal entry is found, necessary penal action should be initiated against the officials, including those of the forest department,” it said.
A review of the situation should also be carried out periodically to further help build a kind of institutional mechanism for preventing such unauthorised entry into reserve forests, it added.
The HC also said that constant surveillance of the reserved area is required to ensure that encroachers do not enter again and spoil the ecological balance.
The state government has carried out nine eviction drives since June, displacing more than 50,000 people. Most of those displaced by the eviction drives are Bengali-speaking Muslims, who say their ancestors settled in these areas after losing their land in the ‘char’ or riverine regions to erosion by the Brahmaputra.
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