 |
| KMSS activists partcipate in the rally at Boginadi in Lakhimpur district on Tuesday. Picture by Pranab Kumar Das |
Tezpur, Oct. 14: The Subansiri Anchalik and Lakhmipur district units of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) today took out a procession against government inaction with regard to erosion by the Subansiri in Lakhimpur district.
The KMSS took out the procession from Boginadi east to the circle office with more than 300 protesters of the affected villages who shouted slogans demanding rehabilitation of those rendered homeless in the past decade.
Boginadi is about 225km from Tezpur and 10km from North Lakhimpur, the district headquarters.
Ajad Hazarika, the central vice-president of KMSS, told this correspondent that the organisation protested against government inaction after the erosion damages by the Subansiri in Boginadi circle.
Hazarika said more than 30 villages, housing 3,000 families, have been left homeless by erosion in the past 10 years and vast expanses of farmland destroyed. He said the organisation demanded that the government comes up with a long-term solution. He also said the water resources department has failed to implement its schemes and that its approach was unscientific and outdated.
“The government has come up with various schemes against erosion but on the ground there has been no work at all. If it wants to protect the villagers from erosion, water resources minister Rajiv Lochan Pegu needs to properly implement the schemes that were approved earlier,” Hazarika said.
According to official reports, the Subansiri basin covers an area of 35,771sqkm of which 4,350sqkm falls in the north bank of Assam. The maximum discharge recorded at Chowldhoaghat is 12,636.43 cumecs in 1987. The catchment area of the river in Assam almost entirely represents the floodplain and is ravaged by floods almost every year. Flood waters from the river Subansiri and its tributaries generally inundate the flood pains in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts of Assam.
The KMSS activists later submitted a memorandum to chief minister Tarun Gogoi through the Boginadi circle officer.
