GUWAHATI: Activists of three Mising organisations along with members of the Laika-Dodhia Rehabilitation Committee stormed into the Tinsukia deputy commissioner’s office on Thursday demanding rehabilitation of over 1400 families of Laika and Dodhia villages.
Protesters, holding placards and banners, marched through the road and breached barricades put up by police to finally enter the Tinsukia DC’s office.
It may be mentioned that several hundreds of protesters belonging to the two villages have been camping at Lezaihola Borguri in Tinsukia town for over a month now, braving cold weather and coping with the absence of basic healthcare and drinking water facilities.
“Our rehabilitation process has not started even as our people have put up at makeshift camps demanding the same for over a month now. Three villagers, including a pregnant woman, have died during the period. The government had constituted a high-level committee but things remain uncertain till date,” Apio Taid, member of Laika and Dodhia Rehabilitation Committee, said.
Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had on December 30, 2020, constituted a high-level committee to find a logical and permanent solution for the rehabilitation of the families of Laika and Dodhia.
Sonowal had asked the environment and forest and revenue departments to permanently rehabilitate the families by January 31, 2021.
Laika falls under Tinsukia district and Dodhia in adjoining Dibrugarh district.
The area where the two villages – home to 1480 families displaced by the earthquake of 1950 and located inside the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park – are located have been declared a protected area recently.
“If the government fails to rehabilitate the families by the stipulated date, then the villagers would be compelled to rehabilitate themselves in the area inside the national park,” Ajay Doley, a leader of Takam Mising Parin Kebang (TMPK), an influential Mising students union, said.
