Bonti Konwar, 70, cannot help being political while showing her broken home in a suburb of Guwahati. She says the BJP is doing the bidding of the rich and powerful in the name of civic governance.
Two years ago, the state government started the demolition of 1,203 houses in Barbari area on the fringes of Guwahati to revive the Silsako beel (lake). On the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, angry residents have exhumed the issue of their razed homes.
When the eviction drive started, the family of Bonti moved a local court. She alleges that her house was demolished even after she had shown a stay order issued by the court to the officials who oversaw the eviction drive.
"This is my home, and I am not going to quit until the government listens to us," an emotional Bonti told The New Indian Express.
She and her husband, Nareswar Konwar, 80, have built a makeshift hut where a concrete home stood till a few months ago. The hut stands amid a landscape of rubble of totally razed houses, only punctuated by excavators and dumping trucks in the distance.
As they wait it out, an old steel cupboard stands outside the broken house. A breeze blows across a well-kept bed of pink flowers blissfully unaware of the fate of those who tended to them.
'Only the buildings of the rich are standing'
The couple originally hail from northern Assam’s Lakhimpur district and have three sons who are supporting them financially.
"Our second son, who is a contractor, had bought a half-constructed RCC building. We moved here after he had completed it. He spent a lot of money," Nareswar says.
It is not just Nareswar and Bonti. Priyakumar Sinha, a young software engineer with his own start-up, was quick to accuse the BJP government of breaking its promise of protecting indigenous interests.
"We are people from here while those from Bangladesh are being brought through CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act)," he says.
Brajabasi Singh, a retired employee of BSNL, is also in no mood to forgive the authorities.
"Only those buildings belonging to the rich, including a couple of politicians, and the hotel are standing," he says pointing to the structures.
“When I learnt about some ex-servicemen buying land here, I bought a plot of land. I invested everything I had in buying the land and building my house,” Singh, who now lives in a rented accommodation, says.
'We paid our annual taxes'
The residents allege that the authorities arbitrarily increased the area of demolition and included homes that were not within a pre-decided no-go area.
The area, Barbari, falls under the Dispur Assembly constituency and the Guwahati parliamentary seat. These affected people say they will go against the BJP in the polls on May 7.
Indrani Devi, a Meitei woman who is a third-generation Assamese citizen, looks worried. "My sister underwent untold hardship to build our house while she worked at a college (in Guwahati)," Indrani says in fluent Assamese.
Gayatri Bori says the residents had access to basic amenities provided by the government and they could never imagine such a fate.
"We had access to electricity and drinking water. We paid the annual taxes too to the civic body. A road was also built in our area by the government," she says.
She adds that they had parted with a portion of their land when the authorities told them about widening the road but soon, the eviction followed.
'We will vote, but not for the BJP'
"We are neither illegal immigrants nor are we encroachers. We had bought the land. Assamese, tribals, Meiteis, indigenous Muslims lived here. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had told the media that we will be rehabilitated in flats. We are waiting," the woman in her thirties says.
The residents are pursuing the issue of rehabilitation with the authorities. Some 300 affected families have received money for rehabilitation, Gayatri says.
"There is no question of supporting a government that demolished our houses. Nobody from the government came to enquire about our well-being. We will vote, for this is our democratic right but we will not vote for the BJP. We had voted for the party for change but it evicted its own people," she says.
The residents claimed that the government said it would give Rs 10 lakh to those whose RCC houses were demolished, Rs 5 lakh for the 'Assam-type' houses and Rs 1.5 lakh for the thatched houses. "We demand Rs 25 lakh, Rs 15 lakh and Rs 5 lakh respectively along with 1 katha and 5 lessa land for each family," demands Gayatri.
Leaders of the Congress and regional party Raijor Dal have been in touch with the troubled residents.
For the state government, civic governance of Guwahati has been difficult as it tries to create space for preventing waterlogging and water treatment.
In February this year, the state's housing and urban affairs minister Ashok Singhal had told the Assembly that 166 acres of the land had been cleared from encroachment. Silsako is an important natural stormwater reservoir.
