Guwahati: Assam’s capital city has, at least in terms of urbanisation, witnessed nothing less than an explosion in the past two decades. Speak to a person who is in their 30s and they will tell stories about the ‘empty’ parts of the cities; the waterbodies that regaled them as much as it scared them because of the mosquitoes.
But while everyone is nostalgic about a quieter, cleaner and greener Guwahati of the past, few, if any, highlight their role in how a city full of water bodies and located next to the mighty Brahmaputra resembles a parched city during summers and needs motorboats to cross streets during monsoons.
The reason people rarely, if ever, talk about their role is because, well, they know they might be guilty of occupying government land and turning them into homes. And hoping that the government looks the other way.
But it seems the Himanta Biswa-led government is not going to do that. Over the past two years, the government has carried out evictions across the state: from the contentious and controversial evictions in Sipajhar to the recent evictions carried out earlier this year in the heart of Guwahati, the government, at least on paper, is leaving no stone unturned in recovering lost land.
The family of Pramod Sinha is just one among thousands paying the price for government action, but they believe they did not do anything wrong. Well, not technically at least, and they also believe that if they are paying the price, those who ‘sold’ the property and dream to them must also not go scot-free.
After being evicted from the Eksonia plot of land on the Silsako Beel he bought for Rs 2 lakh allegedly in 2008, Pramod Sinha’s family now stays with his brother on another Eksonia land in the forest hills like many others in Guwahati. Since banks don’t provide loans to build homes on government or protected lands, they took a loan citing business development as the reason. Of course, they are yet to pay the loan.
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In Assam, land and land ownership is referred to in various terms.
One of the most common terms is Eksonia, a piece of land which you inhabit and pay property tax on, but you cannot sell or transfer it to any other person. In this manner, Eksonia differs from Miyadi, which signifies ownership and the ability to sell and transfer subject to rules and regulation. For example, Miyadi land cannot be bought or sold to a non-ST person in the tribal belts of Assam.
“There is no way I can comprehend building another house in the future as now the bank has started sending us notices to pay back the outstanding loan amount for our first home, the one that has been razed to the ground. We haven’t been able to pay the instalments as we are still recovering from the eviction,” a grieving Sinha tells EastMojo.
What are Eksonia Land and Miyadi Land?
Eksonia Land refers to inhabited land whose occupants do not have the required documents to prove ownership of the said land. They may stay there, pay electricity bills and even property tax, but they neither own that land nor can they sell it to a third party. In several cases, like in Silsako, the occupants may be evicted if the government feels so. However, in some cases, the occupants may be able to claim compensation.
Miyadi land is what you can claim as yours. You own it, can sell it, and you pay taxes for it. One cannot be evicted from Miyadi Land, however, the land can be acquired by the government after following due process and paying adequate compensation. No one in Silsako, for example, owned Miyadi land.
The evictions hit Sinha particularly hard, as he had invested in the area. He owned one plot which was almost 30,000 sq ft in size (two bighas and one kattha, in local parlance) for just Rs 2 lakh and another plot of about 3,000 sq feet for Rs 60,000. Sinha, a shopkeeper by profession, bought all the land from a broker who had occupied some Eksonia land and sold property to him and seven others in 2007.
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Documents? Yes. Ownership? No.
No matter who you speak to among the evictees, everyone wants to show that they had some document to show that their occupation was ‘legal’. Sinha has property tax receipts to support his ownership claim. But the ‘proof’ has problems of its own. The property tax, Sinha claims, dates to 2011, but they paid a lump sum in 2021 when they applied for a holding number after building their ‘permanent’ home.
Even the smaller piece of land that Sinha claims his own has doubtful origins. He told EastMojo that a doctor, who he does not wish to name, ‘donated’ the land to him for just Rs 60,000. However, it is pretty clear that given its location, it was most probably bought from a land grabber who assured them political security from eviction.
“We needed loans from banks to build our home but banks don’t provide loans for homes built on Eksonia land. So, the women’s self-help group we were associated with took the loan in the name of developing our shop in 2018 and used the loan to build our home,” he said.
Sinha may seem to have lost hope, but others believe it is a matter of when, not if, they return to ‘their land’.
“We are awaiting the results of the 2024 elections. Once a new government comes to power and the existing one topples, we will stake a claim on the land once again. We are keeping an eye out for a new regime to come,” said a person on the condition of anonymity. The person added that several families who perform odd jobs in the city to make a living are waiting for the end of the rainy season to reoccupy the land.
Other evictees take a much different, almost spiritual response to the evictions. Following his eviction, Naren Dutta and his family moved to a temporary rented accommodation nearby, a one-room set-up with entire families crammed into it. Watching his life-long investment reduced to debris with the scenic view of the Silsako Beel in the background has convinced Dutta it was ‘bad fate’.
“I invited bad fate into my home,” he said, adding, “I caused my own doom by disrupting nature and buying land on a wetland. This is the price I had to pay for trying to disturb Mother Nature. I made a huge mistake by settling here. I work at a private company. I have failed as a father and a husband. It will be challenging for me to find another affordable plot of land to rebuild a comfortable home once again.”
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Modus operandi of land mafia: Start with one pole in ground
Extensive conversations with officials, residents of the nearby areas and experts have shown that several among those evicted are, for the lack of a better word, land grabbers, who initially mark a plot of land of their choice using bamboo posts and then build small structures like thatched huts. Soon enough, thatched huts turn into concrete structures, followed by applications for GMC holding numbers and eventually, payment of property taxes.
Several evictees believe they have ownership because they pay property tax, but officials at the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) say this is nothing less than ignorance on the part of the evictees.
“No one can claim rights for land in the name of possessing a GMC holding number. Some people have grabbed the land without any documents or without following due process. Others go to the land mafia to acquire such lands easily. You get a broker and I don’t believe that people didn’t know they were getting conned. Not possible. It’s a risk they accept thinking it might work out and if it does, it’ll be worth it,” a senior GMDA official told EastMojo.
Another senior official, who was a part of the eviction, said: “I went to the site for inspection and I saw a construction site on a plot which I knew to be the beel. There were about 20 (people) with Audis and BMWs etc and they were supervising plot encroachment. I stopped them and asked ‘Who are you?’, to which they said they own the land. Then I asked them to come to the GMDA office the next day with all their papers if they owned the land because it’s a property that belongs to the government. They didn’t come. A week down the line, I filed an FIR and had them removed within a week. Most people do not have a document to prove that they owned the land. They show ration cards, electricity bills and holding numbers. Now, the story making the rounds is that they were there from 2008 after they were evicted from the Narengi Army cantonment.”
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Another GMDA official explained the modus operandi. “They usually start with someone sticking a pole on the ground. Then, maybe a week later, they put up a CI roof on top and they grab land. One can’t go there, place a couple of bamboos and claim the land to be theirs. There is a big nexus. There are people selling this government land. And they’re very well-known people. It’s not as if people don’t know them,” he said.
He added, “During our initial investigations into the land mafias operating in the area, no one seemed to disclose any of the identities. Until the time we acted against those occupying or acquiring plots on the protected wetland area and selling them, nobody shared their (land mafia) names with us. It was after the GMDA filed the FIRs on the land scammers that everybody in the area seemed to know them. They all went underground and we have not been able to catch them so far. The police have been unable to trace them.”
In part two, we will look at why people take such risks and how negligence on the part of the authorities allows for such extensive violations of law.
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