Goalpara district administration launched a demolition drive of more than 660 homes of mostly Muslim families residing in Hasila Beel area adjacent to Goalpara town in western Assam on Sunday. Around 45 per cent of evictions were completed on Monday as the authorities look to complete the eviction process on Tuesday.
Occupied by mostly daily wagers, the evictions are intended to clear 1566 bighas of land from alleged ‘encroachment’ in the wetland.
On 13 May 2025, the district authorities had put up a few banners informing the villagers to vacate the place within two days. The Villagers said dismantling the houses built in their lifetime within two days was not possible.
However, district authorities told local media that the administration had sent notices in 2023 and September 2024 to residents to vacate the place. Almost everyone Maktoob media spoke to echoed that they had no place to go.
“All my life, we have lived here. My father is 80 years old now, and he was born here. All we have known is this place. Without this place, I have nowhere to go as I do not have any land in any other place”, says 50-year-old Suleman Ali, who has been standing in front of his demolished house the whole day.
“Some 25 years ago, the government had done a survey and we paid fines for encroachment as per the legal process till 2018”, Ali said, expressing his hopes about getting a settlement someday as per the state’s law.
After coming to power for the first time in 2016, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, then led by Sarbananda Sonowal, stopped taking the encroachment fines in 2018 from people living on government land.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
