Assam Congress Legislature Party leader Debabrata Saikia has moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) regarding the government’s alleged attempt to evict people from the Laika-Dadhia area of the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park and the Mikir Bamuni Grant.
Saikia in a letter sent to the NHRC on Monday urged the rights panel to “take suo motu cognizance of the matter.”
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“I would like to draw the attention of the NHRC to two ongoing instances of gross injustice being meted out to many members of the Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) communities in the Tinsukia and the Nagaon districts of Assam by the State government, by way of violation of their land rights and basic human rights.
“The first instance involves around 1,300 ST and OBC families who were settled in the Laika-Dadhia area of the Dibru-Saikhowa Wildlife Sanctuary in Tinsukia district after the great earthquake of 1950.
“The Government is now seeking to evict them, thereby going back on successive assurances over the last three years or so that these hapless people would be suitably rehabilitated,” he stated in a letter to the NHRC.
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Saikia pointed out that the affected people of Laika and Dadhia have been staging a protest since the last week of December 2020 at a makeshift site near the Tinsukia Deputy Commissioner’s office.
“Three protesters, including a pregnant lady and her unborn child, have died because they were unable to bear the chill of winter in the makeshift camp. Many other protesters are suffering from fever, nose-bleed, etc.,” he stated.
Saikia said he has secured a report from the Tinsukia DC, which, he claimed, proves that the affected families have been living in the Laika-Dadhia area since the 1950s and before the area was notified as a wildlife sanctuary.
“Hence, their just demands ought to be heeded by the State Government,” he said.