Guwahati: Prabajan Virodhi Manch (PVM), an anti-Bangladeshi migrant organisation, alleged ‘Mission Basundhara,’ Assam government’s land reform/settlement scheme is a “land policy meant for creating a Bangladeshi vote bank.”
“Mission Basundhara styled as a land reform/settlement scheme is in fact a scheme for creating a Bangladeshi vote bank by allotting 13.6 lakh bigha (over 4.5 lakh acres) of PGR (Professional Grazing Reserve)/VGR (Village Grazing Reserve) land to landless immigrant families who came to Assam until 2011,” convenor of the Manch and Supreme Court lawyer Upamanyu Hazarika said addressing media persons here on Wednesday.
The Manch convenor said while the Assam government was trying to portray an anti-immigrant image by conducting eviction drives in many parts of the state, “in reality, they are on a mission to give them settlement in the rich and fertile PGR/VGR lands of the state.”
“On the face of it, Mission Basundhara appears to be a laudable initiative simplifying land procedures. But the actual aim is the establishment of Bangladesh migrants on indigenous lands and at one stroke nullifying the Assam Movement, Clause 6 Committee Report, Brahma Committee Report, Upamanyu Hazarika Committee Report, etc.,” he said.
“The state government has, through a notification on November 11, 2022, set out the modalities of a grant of PGR-VGR lands to encroachers and others by conferring ownership rights upon them. More than 90 per cent of these encroachers are of Bangladeshi origin,” Hazarika said.
“Even though under the Assam Accord, citizenship was granted to migrants from Bangladesh/East Pakistan to Assam prior to March 25, 1971, Assam took the burden of 23 years of additional immigration compared to the rest of India (the cut-off year is 1948 for rest of India), Clause 6 of the Assam Accord provided for safeguards to the indigenous population,” the Manch convenor claimed.
“The committee appointed by the government in February 2020, had recommended land rights, employment, trade licences, etc. only to those whose names or that of their ancestors are recorded in the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC). This was also the recommendation of the Upamanyu Hazarika Commission submitted to the Supreme Court in 2015 and accepted by the state government,” he said.
The forum chief further pointed out that Himanta Biswa Sarma in December 2019 had emphatically asserted as a minister in the earlier government that the Clause 6 Committee report would be implemented by the Government without altering “any full stop or comma”.
“In fact, senior officials and land experts have expressed surprise at the appointment of Nazrul Islam as the advisor and architect of Mission Basundhara as a significant number of officers having greater expertise on land and revenue matters have been overlooked,” Hazarika further claimed.
The Brahma Committee report, commissioned by the BJP government, had in 2018 identified 7.28 lakh bighas of PGR and 6.38 lakh bighas of VGR lands in the state.
“This committee had made a significant recommendation of preserving PGR and VGR lands on the basis that Assam, being primarily an agricultural economy, (65 per cent of land being agriculture dependent) and with the uneconomic size of land holding, the PGR and VGR lands would supplement the income of farmers for cattle rearing and grazing,” he pointed out.
“In fact, not only has the Brahma Committee recommended against de-reservation of PGR and VGR lands, it had proposed that further additional land be re-reserved for PGR/VGR to promote cattle rearing and grazing as additional sources of income,” the Manch convenor said.
He further alleged that the entire exercise of land allotment was being undertaken in a surreptitious manner.
“The chief minister is emphasising his government’s ‘achievement’ of eviction of encroachers from satra land and trying to distract public attention from this nefarious project to settle illegal immigrants,” he alleged.
“All encroachers evicted in various operations have been resettled with permanent land rights, housing etc in alternative sites which is completely contrary to the provisions of the Assam Land Grabbing Act, 2010 under which land grabbing is a punishable offence carrying a maximum imprisonment of 5 years,” the Manch convenor said.
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“In the much-touted Gorukhuti, Sipajhar eviction process, all the encroacher families have been resettled with housing and cattle in Dalgaon. The so-called Gorukhuti agriculture project in Sipajhar has grabbed the land of indigenous cattle grazers who are now denied access to land on which they have been grazing cattle and sustaining their livelihood over generations,” he alleged.
“Local villagers, who are grazers, have to pay Rs 1600 to the Gorukhuti project per bigha per month on the lands they’ve been grazing for generations,” he added.
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