The pro-eviction brigade on Saturday staged a protest against Thursday’s attack on police and other government personnel during an eviction drive carried out in a tribal belt on the city outskirts and also prevented a Congress delegation from visiting the affected sites and meeting the afflicted.
Local tribal and student organisations under the Sonapur revenue circle in Kamrup (Metro) district administration staged a human chain protest against the attack on government personnel by alleged illegal settlers at Kachutali village located under the protected tribal belt and bloc. Altogether 35 people, including 22 policemen and 13 evictees were injured, of whom two have died.
The injured evictees were Bengali Muslims with roots in present-day Bangladesh whom chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma alluded as suspected illegal migrants but the affected have refuted the claim.
The local organisations have come out in open support of the BJP-led government’s eviction drive and have also prevented the entry of the Opposition parties till the drive is completed because it has been their demand for the past several years, a person familiar with the developments said.
Nobody other than tribals and other protected classes reside in such belts. The pro-eviction brigade had on Friday stopped a group of AIUDF MLAs and leaders from entering the area and meeting the affected. On Saturday, a 13-member Congress delegation, led by Assam Pradesh Congress Committee working president, Jakir Hussain Sikdar, ran into the pro-eviction brigade. They were greeted with "Congress go back" slogans.
The visiting Congress leaders said they were not against the eviction drive, they were for the protection of the tribal belt and bloc and they condemned the attack on the cops.
Assam CLP leader Debabrata Saikia, who had constituted the delegation to visit the affected area, had on Friday also written a letter to the Assembly speaker, Biswajit Daimary, on the “forcible eviction” requesting him to send an all-party delegation to Kachutali “after evictions led to casualties and injuries”.
Assam DGP G.P. Singh said on Friday that the eviction was carried out as per rules. He had also said the suspected conspiracy angle in the attack on the government personnel would be probed. Assam chief minister Sarma had blamed the Opposition Congress for the attack on the government personnel on Friday.
However, Saikia's letter to the Speaker paints a different picture. He cited the Supreme Court and Gauhati High Court rulings which state that “notice to the encroachers before evictions, from any kind of land, must be served, otherwise it will be violation of Article 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. Our chief minister has openly made a statement that encroachers on government land need not be served notice.”