Assam forest officials accused of threatening electors to vote for BJP candidate

Silchar: Nine senior officials of the Assam forest department, including the special chief secretary and head of forest force, MK Yadava have been accused of threatening a section of the voters in Assam’s Karimganj parliamentary constituency. 
According to the residents, they were threatened to cast their votes for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Kripa Nath Mallah for the seat or get ready to face bulldozers. 
Advocate Abdul Kashim Talukdar and advocate Momotaz Begam submitted the petition before the court on behalf of the complainants. 
Voting for the Karimganj seat took place on Friday. The seat has nearly 60% Muslim voters. There are 24 candidates in the fray, but the main contest is stated to be between Mallah, the sitting MP, and Congress’s Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury.
The incident came to light after a group of people from Cheragi and other villages in Karimganj and Hailakandi approached a local court in Karimganj district against the nine top forest officials and 45 others for allegedly threatening them, using unparliamentary words and also trying to influence them to vote for a political party. 
According to the complaint, the forest officials earlier this week, came with 40-45 armed forces in black attire including Assam Police Commando, Forest Force, Armed Police and Armed Forest Guard. “They entered the houses, searched for hours, kept us outside and later clicked our pictures,” the complaint said. 
According to the complaint filed with the court of Karimganj chief judicial magistrate, on April 24, the officials asked them to vote for BJP candidate Mallah or they would be evicted from their houses by bulldozers after June 7.
“They addressed us using abusive and insulting languages like refugees, bangalor bangal hokol (son of migrant Muslims) etc. and asked to vote for BJP candidate,” the residents said. 
“They also said that if we vote for BJP then we can reside here peacefully and happily even by constructing pucca houses and buildings,” added the complaint. 
Along with MK Yadava, the accused forest officials include Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF), Silchar, Rajiv Kumar Das, two divisional forest officers (DFO), Akhil Dutta and Vijay Timbak Palve, deputy rangers (in-charge) Cheragi Range and Manoj Sinha, forester Ajit Paul, beat officer Faiz Ahmed, forest guard Tapash Das and others. 
HT reached out to MK Yadava but he did not respond to the calls. Rajiv Kumar Das said they were following the rulebooks of the department to clear the encroached forests. “I joined here recently and we had clear instructions from the higher authorities to clear the encroached forests. We did our job following the rulebooks,” Das said.
Palve said he had no idea why his name was mentioned in the case. “I went there to receive a senior officer, had no idea what was happening,” he said. Dutta also did not respond to the calls. 
Advocate Talukdar said that residents were taken to the forest office at night and were kept there for hours by the officials. “Their mobile phones were taken away and they were called in a room one by one. An environment of fear was created to threaten them properly,” he said. 
“One official can personally support a party but he cannot force any other citizen to support that party. We have proof against them and will submit this before the court on the day of the hearing,” Talukdar said. 
The BJP leaders in Karimganj refused to comment on the issue. Congress MLA Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, who was seen campaigning for the BJP candidate, said that the law must take its course but there has to humanitarian approach. 
“Eviction is required in some areas but if the allegations are true, I would say that there must be a humanitarian approach,” he said.