Guwahati, Jan 4: Prabajan Virodhi Manch (PVM), a forum against illegal immigrants, has alleged that ‘Mission Basundhara,’ the land reform/settlement scheme of the Assam government, “is meant for creating a Bangladeshi vote bank.”
“Mission Basundhara, styled as a land reform/settlement scheme, is in actual fact a scheme for creating a Bangladeshi vote bank by allotting 13.6 lakh bigha (over 4.5 lakh acres) of PGR (Professional Grazing Reserve)/VGR (Village Grazing Reserve) land to landless immigrant families who came to Assam until 2011,” convenor of the Manch and Supreme Court lawyer Upamanyu Hazarika said while addressing media persons here on Wednesday.
The Manch convenor stated that while the Assam government was trying to portray an anti-immigrant image by conducting eviction drives in many parts of the state, “in reality they are on a mission to give them settlement in the rich and fertile PGR/VGR lands of the state.”
“On the face of it, Mission Basundhara appears to be a laudable initiative simplifying land procedures but the actual aim is establishment of Bangladesh migrants on indigenous lands and at one stroke nullifying the Assam Movement, Clause 6 Committee Report, Brahma Committee Report, Upamanyu Hazarika Committee Report, etc,” he said.
Notably, the Assam government had in November last year launched the second phase of Mission Basundhara under which eight land-related services would be provided to people in the digital mode.
The new services under the Mission Basundhara 2.0 are settlement of government khas and ceiling surplus land, conferring ownership rights to occupancy tenants, settlement of transferred annual patta land, settlement of VGR and PGR land, settlement of land for indigenous special cultivators, settlement of hereditary land of tribal communities, composite land transfer service and online payment of land revenue.
“The state government has, through a notification on November 11, 2022, set out the modalities of grant of PGR-VGR lands to encroachers and others by conferring ownership rights upon them. More than 90 percent of these encroachers are of Bangladeshi origin,” Hazarika said.
“Even though under the Assam Accord, citizenship was granted to migrants from Bangladesh/East Pakistan to Assam prior to March 25, 1971 and Assam took the burden of 23 years of additional immigration compared to the rest of India (cut-off year is 1948 for rest of India), Clause 6 of the Assam Accord provided for safeguards to the indigenous population,” the Manch convenor claimed.
“The committee appointed by the government in February 2020 had recommended that land rights, employment, trade licences, etc should be granted only to those whose names or that of their ancestors are recorded in the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC). This was also the recommendation of the Upamanyu Hazarika Commission submitted to the Supreme Court in 2015 and accepted by the state government,” he said.
Hazarika further alleged that the entire exercise of land allotment was being undertaken in a surreptitious manner.
“All encroachers who have been evicted in various operations have been resettled with permanent land rights, housing etc., in alternative sites which is completely contrary to the provisions of the Assam Land Grabbing Act, 2010 under which land grabbing is a punishable offence carrying a maximum imprisonment of 5 years,” the Manch convenor said.