‘Land jihad must be stopped’: CM Sarma defends Assam’s mass evictions

An excavator being used to demolish encroachments from the Paikan Reserve Forest area, in Goalpara district.

As eviction drives escalate across Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said the state government has cleared encroachments from approximately 160 square kilometres of land in the last four years, displacing nearly 50,000 people.

Sarma, interacting with the media on Wednesday, claimed that these evictions were aimed at halting a "demographic invasion" by "people of one religion" and preserving the identity of indigenous Assamese communities.

It should be mentioned here that the state government has launched five major eviction operations over the past month across four districts, removing at least 3,300 families from forest land, grazing land, and government revenue areas.

Since 2021, over 1.19 lakh bighas of land have been cleared. This includes more than 84,000 bighas of forest land, 36,000 bighas of grazing land, and 26,000 bighas of government land, according to officials cited in an Indian Express report.

Sarma has also directed district administrations to remove the evicted individuals' names from local voter lists. He argues that duplications must be eliminated to “protect Assamese constituencies.” “You cannot have names in two places,” says the chief minister.

Moreover, the chief minister used particularly strong language during his remarks, referring to a “land jihad” allegedly underway in Upper Assam.

Citing an eviction in Lakhimpur district, he said 220 families were removed, many of whom had migrated from areas like Barpeta, Nagaon, and South Salmara.

“A conspiracy had started to change the jonogothoni (demography), which we were able to stop,” he said, warning of irreversible demographic shifts if left unchecked.

Tensions flared up in Dhubri district on July 9 during Assam’s largest eviction drive to date, as stated by the government. The operation cleared 3,500 bighas (over 450 hectares) of land earmarked for a Rs 40,000 crore thermal power project, displacing nearly 1,400 families.

As per officials, the eviction was conducted with full legal procedure, including prior notices, and involved the deployment of hundreds of JCB machines under tight police security.

Sarma has been defending the land clearance as essential for infrastructure development and accused opposition leaders of politicising the issue.

“Now they are doing politics in the name of this girl to provide security to Bangladeshis,” he remarked. “Their objective is to stop the BJP’s eviction campaign, but the BJP has gone ahead with it.”

Further evictions would take place in Dhubri’s Chappar region and other parts of the state, including Goalpara, where another 1,100 families are set to be displaced this week, CM Sarma has reiterated.

“These drives are aimed at protecting the land rights and freedom of indigenous people,” Sarma said, insisting that “no outsider” would be allowed to settle in areas like Bodoland. He said evictions would continue until encroachments by “illegal Bangladeshis” were eliminated from state-owned and forest lands.