Assam govt carries out eviction drive against illegal settlers in Lumding forest
The Hojai district administration has used elephants, bulldozers to demolish the illegal constructions inside the reserve forest lands.
Guwahati, November 09: The Assam government has started a two-day eviction drive in the Lumding reserve forest in Hojai district to remove illegal encroachers from the forest lands. The state government has carried out the drive, following the directives of the Guwahati High Court.
The Assam government had deployed about 1000 security personnel, including the State Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to prevent any untoward incident. The Hojai district administration has used elephants and bulldozers to demolish illegal constructions inside the reserve forest lands. An official of the Hojai district administration said that the eviction drive will continue on November 9 as well.
According to the report, the Lumding reserve forest located in the Hojai district has covered an area of over 22,403 hectares and out of this 1,410 hectares have been encroached upon by people.
As per Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the government has evicted around 1,500 families from the Lumding reserve forest. "Many people had encroached on the lands of the reserve forest. Today’s eviction drive was very peaceful. From today, the Lumding reserve forest has become encroachment-free, " Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Earlier, the Assam government had carried out drives to evict illegal settlers from the government lands at the Dholpur Gorukhuti area in the Darrang district.