Assam: Massive Eviction Drives: What Lies Behind
Satanjib Das
ASSAM, of late, has been witnessing a series of massive and ruthless eviction drives unleashed by the BJP state government headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma. Currently these evictions are carried out in the districts and areas mainly inhabited by the religious minorities. Bulldozers are raging down everything – from hearths and homes to schools, places of worship – to the ground with huge posse of police and para-military forces cordoning the areas. Leaders of opposition parties and peoples' representatives are being denied entry to the areas and opportunity to meet the victims, some of whom died or committed suicides being unable to withstand the shock of being pushed into complete destitution overnight. The poignant scenes of wailing poor women and children who have been made homeless shake the conscience of everyone other than the honchos of the ruling party and the government.
Dhubri is the district that witnessed the largest eviction drive in the State's recent history. More than two thousand families in Santoshpur, Charuabakhra, Chirakuti Tilapar and other villages in Chapar and other revenue circles of the district have been evicted affecting nearly twelve thousand people who lost everything they built with their sweat and labour over the years. Five thousand bighas of land have been cleared. Adjacent to Dhubri is Goalpara district where in the month of June six hundred families and four thousand people were evicted from Hasila Beel (wetland) and about four hundred ninety-five acres of wetland were cleared. Another massive eviction drive was carried out in July in Paikan Reserve Forest of Krishnai in the same district. More than one thousand thirty-eight bighas of land was cleared by evicting one thousand eighty families. Similarly in Barkhetri – Bakarikuchi area of Nalbari ninety-three families were evicted. The evicted families and people are left with no avenues for livelihood.
The chief minister of Assam, who has already earned a certain notoriety in spewing communal venom brazenly off and on, seeks to justify these inhuman evictions by invoking the bogey of 'doubtful Bangladeshis' who have encroached upon government lands and grazing/forest reserves. Yet most of the people who suffered eviction, had been living in these areas for decades and many are holding 'ryoti pattas'. Even people holding 'myadi pattas' also have been subjected to eviction. By invoking the bogey of 'doubtful Bangladeshis' the BJP chief minister seeks to cast unwarranted doubt on the bona fides of the citizenship of these hapless minorities. This is a sinister move to ultimately rob these religious minorities of their Indian citizenship and carry forward the political agenda of 'Hindutva'. This, at the same time, is also a manipulative move to mislead and neutralise the people belonging to linguistic and religious majority communities on this issue of eviction so as to pre-empt any united protest or resistance movement against these inhuman and barbaric drives.
The Chief Minister even went so far as to state publicly that if immigrant Muslims report Bengali as their mother tongue in the upcoming census – as one office bearer of the Minority Students Union threatened, though the union later disowned his statement – it would make it easier for the government to identify the number of illegal Bangladeshis. Thus, for him, anyone whose mother tongue is Bengali is essentially presumed to be a Bangladeshi or an illegal foreigner. Can absurdity go any further? Yet, there is a method to this madness. The BJP chief minister, through such seemingly bizarre statements, seeks to weaponise the state’s ethno-communal fault lines to legitimise the eviction drive and reframe it as a communal and ethnic issue.
But the fact of the matter is that the eviction drive is not confined to the religious minorities alone. Indigenous people and ethnic tribes are also not spared. Several thousand bighas of land in Barduar T.E. near Palasbari under Kamrup district, Borjan and Basbari in Bokaghat Sub-Division of Karbi Anglong district, Parbatzora in Kokrajhar district have been targetted for eviction. Eviction notices have been served to people inhabiting these areas most of whom are Scheduled Tribes. Even people residing under the tribal belt and blocks have been served notices. However, due to united resistance of the tribal and indigenous people the government, afraid of the political fall-out, was compelled to pause these eviction drives for the time being. But the government has not abandoned the move and will push through by different means including allurement, deceit and division.
The real reason that triggered such large-scale eviction drives is to extricate land for the big private corporates. This is being done by dispossessing the common people who are mainly peasantry and pushing forward the sinister politics of communal and ethnic divide. The corporate-communal character of the BJP regime has manifested itself in a most brazen and ugly manner in today’s Assam. In Parbatzora three thousand four hundred bighas of agricultural, forest and grazing lands have been earmarked for Adani’s thermal power plant and inhabitants of those lands have been served eviction notice. Soon after the ‘Advantage Assam 2.0 – Investment and Infrastructure Summit 2025’ took place in Guwahati on February 25-26, 2025, the chief minister publicly stated that if the big investors were to come to the state, lands have to be provided to them gratis. He also said that for Assam to become a destination for investment, it must be a movement and agitation-free state. Those utterances signaled the ruthless eviction drive that the state has been witnessing at present. Already several thousand bighas of lands have been handed over to Ramdev’s Patanjali, Adani, Reliance, Vedanta, Essar and their ilk. The BJP government in the state has now been mulling to bring about a new land law by replacing all earlier land related laws to facilitate corporate takeover of land and has formed one Land Regulatory Commission for this purpose. All these are being done without undertaking any comprehensive cadastral survey of the state.
Such overdrive for land acquisition and eviction has come in the wake of some recent findings of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) which confirmed a hidden trove of critical and strategic minerals beneath the landscape of Assam and the North Eastern Region. Apart from coal, oil and natural gas reserves of the state, the GSI survey revealed vast concentrations of Rare Earth Elements (RRE), iron ore, glass sand, limestone and other valuable deposits of vanadium, lithium, cobalt etc., in Assam and the North Eastern region. Dhubri district’s Chandardinga region alone has an estimated 18.29 million tons of iron ore deposits. Similarly, Dima Hasao district has nearly 1500 million tons of limestone, Karbi Anglong over 28 million tons of rare-earth-bearing syenite and Nagaon 4 million tons of Silica sand. The greedy eyes of the corporates have fallen over this mineral wealth of the state and the BJP government is initiating newer measures to facilitate the corporate loot of this wealth. Series of evictions that are taking place are not unrelated to it. The process of handing over these critical and strategic minerals to the big private corporates has gained momentum under the present neoliberal regime particularly since the amendments of the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act were carried out.
Strategic infrastructure is being built to facilitate the loot and plunder by the corporates. A 19 km, Rs 5000 crore four-lane bridge over the Brahmaputra connecting Dhubri with Phulbari in Meghalaya nears completion. Dhubri River terminal was commissioned in 2023 as a part of central government’s inland water strategy. Multiple new railheads are being constructed including in Arunachal Pradesh which is also pregnant with critical mineral resources. Highway network expansions are taking place in Assam and the North Eastern region. Under the aegis of the neoliberal economic policy framework this is being pursued very aggressively by the present ruling dispensation and to delude the people and distract their attention, communal and ethnic identity spins are being thrown in a calculated manner. The state of Assam has turned into a classic example of how the economy of neoliberalism is buttressed by the politics of communal and ethnic divide.
The almost ten year BJP rule in Assam has been a disaster for the state in every respect. Seven years have passed since the investment summit titled ‘Advantage Assam 1.0’ was held with much fanfare and promises of investment galore. But what the state witnessed is complete deindustrialisation. No worthwhile new investment or industries came up. On the contrary, as per figures published by the MSME Ministry of the union government, more than two lakh MSMEs closed their shutters in the state during the last five years. This resulted in a loss of more than three lakh jobs. Here it needs a mention that 34.54 per cent of the state GDP is accounted for by the MSME sector. Two big PSU paper mills under Hindusthan Paper Corporation were closed down during this period. One of those has now been handed over to TATAs virtually on a platter. No wonder, the unemployment in the state has assumed an explosive dimension. Now after ‘Advantage Assam 2.0’ what is being done in the name of industrialisation is to dispossess the vast number of peasantry of their lands, turn them into destitute and ensure corporate loot of the state’s mineral and other resources. The state and its people, particularly the working masses, are therefore confronted with very serious challenges.
The only way out left for them to save their lives and livings and the state itself from utter ruination, is to mobilise themselves in united and intensified struggles against the disastrous policies of the government. Democratic opinion of the state has started asserting itself against these inhuman eviction drives. CPI(M) Assam state committee has given a call for a protest week throughout the state from July 25 to 31 demanding immediate stoppage of this eviction drive and proper rehabilitation of the evicted people and putting an end to the communal propaganda unleashed by the ruling party. The protest week also will demand appropriate enquiry into the scams and corruptions of the ministers of the BJP government and stoppage of the corporate loot. The massive success of the nationwide general strike on July 9 in the state highlights that, despite the ruling party's divisive designs, the working people – irrespective of religious, linguistic, or ethnic identities – are not willing to passively endure the attacks on their lives and livelihoods. That is the only silver lining in an otherwise murky situation.
