Assam begins eviction drive to clear encroached forest land on Nagaland boundary

The Assam government has launched an eviction drive to clear 11,000 bighas of encroached forest land in Uriamghat area of Golaghat district.

The Rengma Reserve Forest, where the first phase of the drive was carried out on Tuesday (July 29, 2025), shares a boundary with Nagaland.

A large contingent of police and Assam Forest Protection Force personnel, along with more than 150 excavators, were deployed in the area, anticipating violence. Officials said the exercise passed off peacefully, as a majority of the illegal settlers had vacated the area after receiving notices from the government

Inspector-General of Police (Law and Order) Akhilesh Kumar Singh, who was at the site, told presspersons that shops and houses built in the reserve forest areas were demolished.

“We provided adequate police protection, and the locals are supporting the exercise. The law and order situation is under control,” he said.

‘More than 20% cleared’

A Forest Department official in the district said more than 20% of the reserve forest has been cleared of encroachment so far. “The encroachers started leaving a few days ago when it was conveyed to them that they cannot stay inside the reserve forest any longer,” he said.

Some 15,000 people, mostly migrant Muslims, were living in the reserve forest after turning vast swathes of the land into betel nut plantations.

The eviction drive followed Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s visit to Uriamghat recently.

“People of Assam are victims of the mass-scale encroachment, demographic alteration, and violence, which is caused by illegal settlers. They are firmly behind our Govt in our crackdown against encroachment and realise the need to reclaim what’s truly ours,” he posted on social media platform X.

The security forces in Assam have been wary of a bid by extremists in Nagaland to take over the cleared forest, claiming it to be an ancestral Naga area. Assam and Nagaland have a decades-old boundary dispute that has claimed more than 150 lives.

‘Move to grab land of Nagas’

On Monday, the Niki Sumi faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland stated that the eviction drive was a “well-planned” move by the Assam government to grab the lands of the Nagas. It accused successive Assam governments of first encouraging “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” to settle in forests along the interstate border and then evicting them to grab the lands of the Nagas.

The eviction drive at Uriamghat is one of a series of such operations since June. More than 55,000 people, mostly Muslims with roots in present-day Bangladesh, have been evicted from forestlands, grazing lands, and government revenue lands in Dhubri, Goalpara, Lakhimpur, and Nalbari districts.