Guwahati (Assam) [India], August 19 : Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday welcomed the Gauhati High Court order directing the state government to fence forest areas to stop encroachment and said the government will carry out more eviction drives in the future.
CM Sarma said the court's decision had also prevented the Congress from announcing the return of land to alleged encroachers.
"The Gauhati High Court has delivered a historic judgement. The Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court said that the government should bring a stern regulation to prevent new encroachment. The government should take action against those government officers under whose watch a large-scale encroachment took place in forest lands," CM Sarma said at a press conference in Guwahati.
A division bench of Chief Justice Ashwini Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhary ordered the state government to fence reserved forest land to prevent future encroachments. The court allowed encroachers 15 days to respond to eviction notices and another 15 days to vacate the land.
The High Court order comes weeks after it directed Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram on July 31 to form a high-level committee to clear forest encroachments along interstate borders.
Sarma alleged that large-scale encroachments happened between 2006 and 2014 during the Congress-led government and called for the punishment of those responsible.
"After this verdict, we have now become more powerful and in the coming days we can carry out more eviction drives. Today's verdict has stopped the announcement of the Congress party that they said they would return the lands after forming the government. This government will not compromise," the Chief Minister added.
"The division bench has given a guideline for future also. After this verdict, we will bring our fight forward to free the forest lands from encroachment. The High Court had already given judgement on VGR/PGR lands and government revenue lands," Sarma said.
The Assam government recently carried out another round of eviction in the Rengma Reserve Forest in Uriumghat, Golaghat district, covering nearly 2,500 bighas (827 acres) of land.
Earlier this month, the administration conducted a large eviction drive in the Uriamghat area, freeing over 10,000 bighas of forest land that had been encroached upon. Several houses and structures were also found to have been illegally built on the land.
So far, the Assam government has freed more than 1.29 lakh bighas of government and forest land, including VGR and PGR land, across the state. The first phase of the large-scale eviction drive in the Rengma Reserve Forest ended on August 2, with operations carried out in Bidyapur and 2 No. Madhupur, according to an official statement.
As per the statement, over five days, vast stretches of encroached forest land have been reclaimed, with illegal structures dismantled across key high-density zones, including Bidyapur, Pithaghat, Sonaribeel, Doyalpur, Dolonipathar, Kherbari, Anandapur, and Madhupur.