Assam eviction drive displaces over 4,000 in Dhubri

An eviction drive in Assam’s Dhubri district has left more than 4,000 people without homes after officials demolished the houses of over 640 Bengali Muslim families in Alamganj Part-IX village on Sunday.

The action covered 650 bighas of land described by the administration as government-owned. District Commissioner Dibakar Nath said notices had earlier been issued to people occupying 800 bighas, but demolition on the remaining 150 bighas was postponed because related matters are still before the courts.

According to Nath, the vacated plot is likely to be transferred to the industrial department, which has been searching for a site for an industrial park for two years. He said the state government would take the final call on how the land is used.

Officials maintained that the families had moved onto the land at different times, with some settling there five years ago and others nearly a decade ago. Nath also claimed that many of the displaced residents owned property elsewhere.

Villagers rejected those assertions. Ali Chand Fakir, an 80-year-old resident, said he had lived in the area since 1962, after floods and erosion along the Brahmaputra forced his family to leave Goalpara district.

Fakir said several households possessed touzi receipts—records showing payment of land revenue for occupation of government land—between 1972 and 2016. He said bulldozers destroyed not only houses but also trees and toilets, leaving families to shelter with relatives, under tarpaulins by roadsides, or in low-lying riverine char areas.

Footage shared on social media in the days before the drive showed families pulling down parts of their own homes and shifting belongings as the eviction deadline approached.

The Dhubri operation is the latest in a series of large-scale evictions under the BJP-led Assam government. Less than a fortnight ago, authorities removed more than 1,100 Muslim families from forest land across Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat districts during a two-day drive.

Data compiled by Scroll from the state revenue and disaster management department and district officials indicates that nearly 19,000 families, most of them Muslim, have been evicted from government land in Assam over the past decade.