About 19,000 families, most of them Muslim, have been evicted from government land during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s last 10 years in power in Assam.
Authorities in Assam razed the homes of more than 600 Muslim families in Nagaon district's Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest on Sunday (18 October), the second day of an eviction campaign, according to a senior forest official quoted by Scroll.
The administration says the settlements stood on forest land.
A day earlier, officials told Scroll that 547 families had been removed from Nagaon, Golaghat and Hojai under heavy security: 336 in Nagaon, 152 in Hojai and 59 in Golaghat. Most were Bengali Muslims.
Together, the two days' figures put the total above 1,100 families.
The Lutumari families had lived for decades on over 300 hectares inside the reserve. Residents reject the label of encroachers, saying the state itself settled them there.
Abdul Noor, 44, who lost his home on Sunday, told Scroll that the government resettled the community in 1974.
He said his landless forebears had come from nearby Juria town and that 300 families had received four bighas each.
Many of them had worked as labourers for the forest department, he said.
Noor said residents had petitioned the Gauhati High Court against the eviction but received no relief.
He added that more than 10 mosques, some over 50 years old, had also been demolished.
Earlier, in June, the All India Union of Forest Working People urged the state to halt the planned eviction.
The group argued that residents of four villages (Kandarpa Longjap, Padumoni, Hatijur and No 9 Kheroni) had been settled under the colonial-era taungya system and should not be treated as ordinary encroachers.
Under taungya, introduced by the British in the mid-19th century and later used in parts of Assam, forest communities grew food crops among commercially valuable trees while working for the forest department.
Scroll, compiling figures from the state revenue and disaster management department and district authorities, reports that about 19,000 families, most of them Muslim, have been evicted from government land during the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) last 10 years in power in Assam.