Guwahati, May 12 (UNI): Tension ran high along the Assam-Nagaland border as the Nagaland Government today lodged a protest against an eviction drive carried out by Assam forest and local police in the disputed Dessoi Valley Reserve Forest.
Official sources said that forest and administrative officials of the Mukokchung district in Nagaland have filed a complaint with their counterpart in Jorhat of upper Assam.
The Nagaland administration said, ‘’Accompanied by armed security personnel, forest and police officials of Assam raided a village in Mokokchung district of Nagaland, and set ablaze 14 hovels in the area.’’ The administration of the neighbouring state also sought action against the officials for ‘intruding into their territory and launching such an illegal action.’’ Led by a Beat Officer, forest officials of Assam carried out an ‘eviction drive’ at the Aosandam Basti in the disputed Dessoi Valley Reserve, which falls partly under Assam and partly under Nagaland, on May 9.
An official, who was present during the drive, said around 14 hovels erected by ‘encroachers’ in the disputed Dessoi Valley Reserve Forest were evicted. Even though the ‘encroachers’, all hailing from Nagaland, protested the Assam Forest department’s move, the Aosandam Basti area, around 25 km from Jorhat in upper Assam, was cleared by the officials. Forest officials said there were more huts in the area, but those could not be evicted due to security reasons.
A source in the Forest department said Nagaland government has fanned out reinforcements in the disputed area to counter any further drives by the Assam government. The inter-state boundary has been a bone of contention between the two northeastern states ever since Nagaland was carved out. While Assam claims that Nagaland has encroached around 1.6 lakh hectares of its territory, the latter says the tracts belong to them ‘traditionally and historically’.
In the NE Sector, which engulfs three reserve forests, around 26,000 hectares has been encroached by encroachers from Nagaland, the Assam government claims. ‘Unification of all Naga dominated areas’, which includes parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, is among the major demands of the insurgent outfit NSCN(IM), which is currently under ceasefire and holding talks with the Centre.
The Assam Government had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a solution to the decades-old boundary dispute. A committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve the vexed dispute recently conducted hearings at Guwahati and Kohima.
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