Why is northeast on edge about Assam evictions? | Explained

The story up to now: The Assam authorities’s drive to evict encroachers from forestlands has despatched alarm bells ringing in different States of the area. Now, States bordering Assam are taking measures to make sure that these evicted from Assam don’t cross over.

When did the eviction drive begin in Assam?

The BJP got here to energy in 2016 by promising to safe jaati (race), maati (land), and bheti (fireplace). Primarily based on a Gauhati Excessive Courtroom order to reclaim encroached forestlands, the primary eviction drive was carried out in three fringe villages of jap Assam’s Kaziranga Nationwide Park in September 2016. Two folks died at Gorukhuti in north-central Assam’s Darrang district when the eviction drive resumed in September 2021, 5 months after the BJP retained energy and Himanta Biswa Sarma grew to become Chief Minister. The eviction drives, allegedly focused at Bengali Muslims, resumed in June 2025, coinciding with costs of corruption in opposition to the BJP-led authorities, one in every of them involving the acquisition and redistribution of Gir cows for an agricultural mission at Gorukhuti, from the place migrant Muslims had been evicted.

What are the roots of the issue?

Evicting encroachers from forestlands, wetlands, and authorities income lands isn’t a brand new phenomenon in Assam. Nonetheless, the operation has been excessive on optics because the BJP and its sub-nationalist regional allies have accused the 15-year rule by Congress of getting paved the bottom for encroachment by the ‘Bangladeshi’, ‘Miya’, or ‘unlawful infiltrators’ — pejoratives for Muslims with roots in present-day Bangladesh — for votes. This class of Muslims has lengthy polarised electoral politics in Assam throughout and after the anti-foreigners Assam Agitation (1979-’85), which led to the signing of an accord prescribing a closing date — midnight of March 24, 1971 — for the detection, deletion (from electoral rolls), and deportation of “unlawful immigrants” or Bangladeshi nationals.

Why is the drive overtly aggressive?

The eviction drives have impacted non-Muslims as effectively, together with 130 households whose homes had been bulldozed to clear the Silsako Beel, a serious wetland in Guwahati, of encroachment in 2022. These in opposition to migrant Muslims, nonetheless, has garnered extra consideration for his or her scale and depth, because it has led to the loss of life of at the least 5 folks between 2016 and July 2025, when 1,080 households had been evicted from 135 hectares of the Paikan Reserve Forest in Assam’s Goalpara district. This aggression can be mirrored within the rhetoric of the Chief Minister and different BJP leaders, who consult with the drive as a long-term train to save lots of Assam from ‘land jihad’.

Earlier than the drive was launched this yr, the Chief Minister stated 15,288.52 bighas of satra (Vaishnav monastery) lands stay illegally occupied by folks of uncertain citizenship throughout 29 districts. He additionally referred to the Union Setting Ministry’s report back to the Nationwide Inexperienced Tribunal that 3,620.9 sq. kilometres of forest space in Assam had been below encroachment as of March 2024. The Chief Minister vowed to proceed the eviction drive till Assam is encroachment-free in “at the least 10 years”, whereas clarifying that tribal folks dwelling in forest areas from earlier than 2005 and coated by the Forest Rights Act wouldn’t be touched. This adopted the fast-track resettlement of at the least 12 Ahom households who had been evicted together with migrant Muslims from village grazing reserves throughout 4 areas in northeastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district.

Why are Assam’s neighbours jittery?

Assam’s neighbours had been passive so long as the eviction drives had been in areas removed from the interstate borders. NGOs in Nagaland stirred into motion after the Assam authorities introduced an anti-encroachment drive in Golaghat district’s Uriamghat. They noticed it as a transfer to push “unlawful Bangladeshi immigrants” inside Nagaland below the agenda of usurping “ancestral Naga lands”. Earlier than the drive commenced, the police in Nagaland’s Niuland district intercepted and turned 200 autos carrying “unlawful migrants” again to Assam. A couple of days later, a conglomerate of extremist teams introduced a job power to protect the Assam-Nagaland border in opposition to infiltrators. The governments of Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Mizoram adopted go well with. They issued orders to the authorities in areas bordering Assam to extend vigilance, stop the evicted folks from coming in, and make the issuance of the inner-line allow, a brief journey doc, stricter.

How are border disputes linked to eviction?

Though opposition political events in Assam see the eviction drive in opposition to Bengali-speaking Muslims as part of the BJP’s agenda of polarisation forward of the 2026 Meeting polls, encroachment is on the core of the State’s boundary disputes with Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. These States had been carved out of Assam between 1963 and 1972. In March 2025, the Assam Meeting was advised that the 4 States have been occupying nearly 83,000 hectares of land belonging to the State. These States have, on and off, pushed migrant Muslims out to Assam, a State they accuse of getting patronised “unlawful immigrants” and made them settle alongside the borders as a ploy to assert disputed lands. Greater than 350 folks have died as a result of inter-State disputes, which Assam has partially resolved with Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. On July 30, the Gauhati Excessive Courtroom directed these 5 States to represent a high-level committee to facilitate a coordinated motion to clear unlawful settlements from forestlands.