After Gobindapur rail colony, it is now the turn of settlers of the East Calcutta Wetlands to move out of their homes.

The government has come up with a strategy for evicting the 25,000-odd encroachers of the wetlands, declared a Ramsar site.

Environment officials said the encroachers were lodged in hutments over 10,000 acres. Many have even grabbed land adjacent to their houses for cultivating paddy and vegetables. Waterbodies in the vicinity are also regularly used for fishing.

Ramsar norms disallow constructions in the marshland. Accordingly, the newly-formed Wetland Management Authority (WMA) has prepared an action plan for recovering the encroached land, rehabilitating the settlers and arranging for their livelihood.

However, unlike the squatters along Dhakuria Lakes, who are being rehabilitated at Nonadanga, the encroachers in the 12,500-hectare wetlands will be resettled in the same area, but in a planned manner.

?We do not want to throw them out and snatch the land. Instead, we plan to make arrangements to ensure a better livelihood for them,?? Amit Kiran Deb, chief secretary and chairman of WMA, told Metro on Friday.

?Under the East Calcutta Wetland Development project, the settlers will be trained by experts in various self-employment schemes.

Post-training, they can engage themselves in growing medicinal plants, floriculture, pisciculture and fish seed farming. These will open up permanent avenues of employment for them,?? the chief secretary added. He said 30 acres have already been earmarked for training.

?Capacity building of the people of this area is part of the ECW development project. We will rope in reputed NGOs in our project. We expect to start the training session from early next year,?? Deb said.

Environment secretary and a member of the WMA, Asim Burman, said Ramsar norms clearly lay down land-use patterns for wetlands.

The rehabilitation scheme will adhere to these stipulations.

?We have started surveying the entire area to assess the extent of encroachment, the settler count and their occupations. We will reclaim the encroached land soon,?? Burman said.

The Rs 1000-crore project will be implemented by the state, with financial assistance from Asian Development Bank, the Centre and private entrepreneurs.

Local residents claim most settlers are either fishermen or farmers, who had settled in the Bantala-Bhangar-Rajarhat area in the sixties.

Taking advantage of a lack of effective vigilance, they gradually took to farming on the encroached land.