Soon after filing his nomination papers on Monday for the Goalpara East assembly seat in Assam, Abdur Rashid Mandal, the Raijor Dal candidate, made it clear that eviction would be the prime focus of his campaign .
The sitting Congress MLA from Goalpara West, recently switched sides to join the regional party, which is part of the Congress-led six-party alliance in the elections that will be held on April 9. Mandal moved constituencies after his earlier constituency was reserved for scheduled tribes (STs) following the 2023 delimitation.
“Eviction is the most vital issue of my seat now. I am contesting to win and ensure that the evicted persons get proper compensation and rehabilitation,” said Mandal, claiming that eviction drives have affected over 1000 families and led to the displacement of 5,000-8,000 people in his constituency.
‘These people have not been given any compensation by the government and have not got any alternate piece of land or means to earn their living,” he added.
Mandal alleged that those affected were forced out of their homes as part of a conspiracy by the ruling BJP-led coalition in the state on the charge that they were squatting on forest land.
“I suspect that records were manipulated as part of a joint survey by revenue and forest departments. There is a need to look at it taking a legal recourse and I am ready for it,” he said.
“The Raijor Dal candidate’s allegations are meaningless. All records whether an area is a revenue village or reserve forest are part of documentary records. If Mandal has any evidence of manipulation, he should approach courts. One needs to know that evictions in Assam are being done as per mandate of Gauhati High Court,” said chief spokesperson of Assam BJP, Kishore Upadhyay.
Since coming to power in 2021, the BJP-led coalition government under under Himanta Biswa Sarma has carried out over 30 major eviction drives in which thousands of houses have been demolished and about 100,000 persons uprooted from 49,500 acres of encroached government and forest land.
“Since we were evicted, we have moved to another location where the state government has provided us with 1 bigha (0.33 acre) land. But we lost all our cultivable land during the eviction and now the family sustains itself on what we earn from irregular jobs,” said Ainuddin Haque, whose family was evicted from Dhalpur-Gorukhuti in Darrang district in September 2021.
The eviction drive at Dhalpur-Gorukhuti was the first major one carried out by the present government in which around 800 families were uprooted to make way for a composite community farming scheme called Gorukhuti Project. Two people including a 12-year-old died and 18 others including eight policemen sustained injuries during clashes between police and evicted families at the site.
Haque’s elder brother, Maynal Haque, was one of the those killed. “Shocked by my brother’s death, my father stopped eating properly and passed away in 2024,” he said.
The state government has made no bones about the fact that the evictions target Bengali-speaking Muslims, pejoratively referred to as Miyas.
“Only Miyas are evicted in Assam. We will not evict Assamese people,” chief minister Sarma said in January.
Experts say that this may be a ploy to win over the indigenous Assamese population who have had a fear of ‘outsiders’ for decades as was seen in the six-year-long anti-foreigner agitation between 1979-85.
“The evictions seem to be a broad and complex combination of several factors including hardline Hidutva, social reform and also a stand on Assamese sub-nationalism. This has sharpened the entrenched polarisation ,” said Kaustubh Deka, professor of political science at Dibrugarh University.
“Eviction is an important issue and will play on the mind of minority voters who could be supporting the Congress this time. Nearly 100,000 people from around 15 to 20 assembly seats (of the total 126) have been affected due to evictions,” said Ainuddin Ahmed, chief adviser of All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU).
He claimed that of those evicted, the names of around 4000 eligible voters were removed during the special revision (SR) of electoral rolls carried out between November last year and February this year.
“We were earlier part of Sipajhar assembly seat, but after eviction and relocation Mangaldai has become our constituency. Following the shift, we applied for transfer of our votes. While 9 of the 11 eligible voters have found mention in the updated voters list, the names of two of my sisters-in-law are missing,” said Ainuddin Haque.
“Election officials have removed their names without intimating them or giving them adequate time to submit applications for transfer of their votes to another constituency,” said AAMSU’s Ahmed.
The issue of evictions and concerns about the rights of those uprooted has reached the judiciary as well. Last month, the Gauhati High Court directed the Assam government to provide basic facilities such as potable water, sanitation and medical care to families affected as part of an eviction drive and are living in makeshift camps.
The court was hearing a petition filed by 60 people who were affected by an eviction drive carried out in June last year at Hashila Beel, a wetland in Goalpara district in which 566 families were evicted.
But the state government isn’t done yet. According to Sarma the evictions carried out in the past five years were able to remove encroachers from only some portion of occupied land and large tracts are still being occupied by ‘illegal settlers’.
“No matter the pressure or the noise, evictions will continue unabated. When we return with our next government, the pace will only double,” he said earlier this month.