Opinion: Evictions, the new weapon
Right to Land is a human right and government cannot bulldoze it
Opinion: Evictions, the new weapon
Evictions are the latest weapon of the BJP government to target their critics, particularly the Muslims in many States ruled by the saffron party.
In a Public Interest Litigation, the Uttarakhand High Court ordered eviction of 4,000 families from railway land in December 2022. This ruling of the High Court affected more than 50,000 people living in this 2.2-km long stretch, most of whom were Muslims. The order was contested in the Supreme Court, which stayed the eviction order on January 5, 2023, while noting that the case had a humanitarian component that needed to be considered. The Supreme Court also mentioned that eviction needs to be accomplished following due process of law and after providing suitable rehabilitation to the ones getting evicted.
SC Intervention
While the Supreme Court intervened in the Haldwani case, directing the authorities to follow due process of law and after providing suitable rehabilitation to the evicted people, the government has not stopped rolling bulldozers on minorities and the marginalised groups. Thereafter, the Supreme Court on September 17 issued an order prohibiting the use of bulldozers by States for demolition of properties of those accused of crime without its permission, saying such action was against the ethos of the Constitution.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, another BJP-ruled State, the Municipal Corporation served an eviction notice to a majority of the Gulmohar and Gyarsi colonies’ residents, who are mostly Muslims, to make way for the Kumbh Mela in 2028. In Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, a 300-year-old mosque that came in the way of the 709 AD Panipat-Khatima highway was demolished road widening.
The Uttar Pradesh government has sent eviction notices to 47 families of Nutan Hardo village, Padrauna tehsil of Kushinagar, of which 44 are Muslims. Their homes and shops were vandalised while serving the eviction notices. Communal violence broke out in Nuh district of Haryana during a Hindu procession on July 31, 2023, and immediately spread to several adjoining areas. The authorities retaliated by illegally demolishing hundreds of Muslim properties and detaining many Muslim youths and men. Hearing the case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court questioned the BJP-led State government whether the government was conducting “ethnic cleansing”.
On September 2, the Supreme Court heard multiple petitions against the demolition of houses of suspected criminals. Judges BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan challenged the legitimacy of demolishing a house solely because the owner was charged during the proceedings. The judges also said that one’s house cannot be demolished even if one is a convict.
Targeting Muslims
The Uttar Pradesh government in a massive eviction drive in Lucknow’s Akbarnagar demolished around 1,800 structures, including 1,169 houses and 101 commercial establishments belonging to Muslims on June 19, 2024. The BJP government plans to develop this area into the Kukrail Riverfront, transforming it into an ecotourism hub. Many residents have lived there for decades, with some claiming that they had been living there even before the development authority was formed. The authorities claim that the encroachers are Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators.
In Assam, the police opened fire on residents of the villages whose houses were demolished on September 12 during an eviction drive in Kachutoli-1 and Kachutoli-2 villages near Sonapur, leading to the deaths of two teenage men. On September 9, the officials demolished 240-odd houses and according to government officials at the drive, they cleared 248 bighas of land in this “tribal belt”, where only people belonging to the Scheduled Tribes were eligible to hold land titles. The evicted families kept their belongings on the vacated land or homes of their immediate neighbours. They do not know where will they go.
There are around 700 families living in the two villages. Around 80 families have been living here before Independence, according to Mainal Haque Choudhry, a Kachutoli resident and former president of Sonapur panchayat. The rest have settled here over the last 3 to 4 decades. Most of them have lost their home due to erosion of the bank of Brahmaputra and resettled in this part of barren lowland and developed the area. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma defended the eviction saying the displaced people were illegal migrants. “We will evict all the suspected citizens who have settled in the tribal belt,” Sarma said.
Interestingly there are nearly 50 Hindu Bengali families residing in the government land in Kachutoli, whose houses were not touched by the government.
Doubts Rule
The BJP government which claims to run the double-engine government, has failed to detect and deport illegal migrants and expresses doubt on the citizenships of the Bengali-speaking Muslims of Assam. The government is acting based on doubt. The Sonapur eviction has received the support of the local tribal groups as the government claims that the eviction drive is to clear tribal belts. The opposition alleged that the eviction was a calculated move of the State BJP government before the 2026 Assam State Assembly elections to woo the Hindus and the tribal voters.
Since 2016, when the BJP came to power in Assam for the first time, selective eviction drive has become a routine exercise. In its first eviction drive, two Bengali-speaking Muslims were killed in police firing near the Kaziranga National Park. In September, 2018, the Assam police opened fire at villagers protesting eviction in Dholpur in Darrang district, killing two civilians. The eviction drive has continued since then. In the Pava reserve forest, 300 Muslim families were evicted on January 11, 2023, 500 families were evicted in Batadrava, a Vaishnabite shrine in Nagaon in December 2022. Assam’s Sonitpur district administration carried out large-scale eviction in Bura Chapori Wildlife Sanctuary in February 2023 and in Kanara Satra, Barpeta, 40 families were evicted. The victims of all these selected eviction drives are Bengali-speaking Muslims.
In Assam, landlessness is a big problem among marginalised groups. It is caused by annual floods and the perennial problem of erosion of riverbanks. Many such flood-affected communities settle on government-owned land as they look for a livelihood. Instead of addressing the problem of landlessness, the Assam government is singling out Miya Muslims from among those occupying state-owned land, only because of their faith.
The right to land is integrally linked with other human rights, especially rights to food, adequate housing, self-determination, security of the person and home, work, livelihood, health and water. International consensus on the need for the legal recognition of the human right to land is growing. Several international human rights guidelines and documents recognise and protect the right to land. In view of such international guidelines, it is the duty of the state to give land rights to the landless people, particularly the marginalised. India being a welfare state with its commitment to human rights cannot pursue bulldozing policy, that too a communally selected one, to push the vulnerable people further into the pit of misery and acute poverty.