Border: Assam told to accept ‘foreigners’ reality before eviction

Meanwhile, Nagaland govt slumbers

EMN
Dimapur, April 24

The non-Naga settlements along Assam-Nagaland border have for long been widely perceived as a buffer zone comprising people of ‘questionable origins’ and foreign nationalities, a zone created by the Assam government incognito with ‘underground organizations’, as claims go.
This socio-political question was yet again raised on Friday by a conglomeration of Naga communities who have sternly questioned what they said was the Assam government’s attempt to evict dozens of areas along the border areas.
The United Naga Tribes Association on Border Areas (UNTABA) issued a disturbed statement on Friday, April 24, making clear that Assam cannot unilaterally facilitate ‘people of questionable origins’ in the Naga lands and create a ‘buffer zone’ with various underground organizations against the original inhabitants of Assam and Nagaland.
The underground groups number more than one and half dozen (lists of underground organizations published on 22/09/2014 in Nagaland Post) and other anti-social elements, according to the UNTAB statement.
The UNTABA took strong note that the Karbi Anglong police and Forest department of Assam will be conducting eviction drives inside the Daldali Reserve Forest which falls under Nambor and part of Diphu Reserve Forests.
While welcoming the initiative of the authority in Karbi Anglong, the UNTABA made clear that Assam must first evict all the settlements around Dilai Gate, 10th Mile, 6th Mile, Nahorijan areas including ‘Sunday Bazar’, Disapur, Hosilik, Doraibari, Jarunala, Dikrongsa, Tin Bangla, Nowgaon, Notun Bosti, Khukri Bosti, Kachunala and any other settlements. These settlements are unilaterally facilitated by “various vested interested authorities from Assam well inside the Reserve Forests which are still yet to be de-notified,” the organization stated. The UNTABA stated: “It must be clearly understood by the authorities in Assam that all these areas belongs to Nagaland traditionally and historically as clearly recorded in the histories of the people since the time of British period.
Therefore, Assam cannot unilaterally facilitate people of questionable origins in these part of Naga lands and create a ‘buffer zone’ with various underground organizations numbering more than one and half dozen (lists of underground organizations published on 22/09/2014 Nagaland Post) and other anti-social elements against the original inhabitants from both the States.”
Despite the case being filed in the Supreme Court in 1988 on the border issue between the two States by Assam, the UNTABA stated, the authorities in Assam have been “surreptitiously facilitating hundreds of settlements in all the Reserve Forests which are yet to be de-notified”.
Such arbitrary actions are in complete disregard to various interim agreements made between the two states and ‘highly deserving the contempt of court as well,’ the statement said.
The UNTABA has asked the authorities in Assam and in particular Diphu administration, to “understand and accept the realities” and seriously consider for complete eviction of all the illegal settlements from its side of the border as per the historical, political and constitutional realities.