Assam Eviction Drives: Bulldozers and Burden of Proof
Between May 2021 and 2026, Assam carried out at least 33 documented eviction operations, according to a March 2026 investigation by The New Humanitarian, which counted more than 20,000 families (20,387) and over 100,000 people displaced, other tallies reportedly put the structures demolished above 22,000.
Thousands of families have lost their homes in the name of clearing encroachment. A look at what the record shows, what the state argues, and what remains unanswered.
The Scale
Between May 2021 and 2026, Assam carried out at least 33 documented eviction operations, according to a March 2026 investigation by The New Humanitarian, which counted more than 20,000 families (20,387) and over 100,000 people displaced, other tallies reportedly put the structures demolished above 22,000.
Official data compiled by Outlook India puts the figure at roughly 19,000 families over the past decade. Revenue department figures reported earlier recorded over 10,620 families removed from government land between 2016 and August 2024, most of them Muslim.
The pace has not slowed. On 17 and 18 October 2026, more than 1,100 families were reportedly evicted from reserved forest land across Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat in two days.
The drives have spread across Lower and Upper Assam over several years. In January 2023, between 300 and 500 families were reportedly evicted from the Pabha Reserved Forest in Lakhimpur. In July 2025, 1,080 families lost their homes at Paikan in Goalpara, and about 1,400 families were cleared from the Chapar area of Dhubri. Between July and August 2025, around 2,500 families were evicted near the Rengma Reserve Forest in Golaghat. In January 2026, over 700 families were evicted in Sonitpur, and evictions resumed in Dhubri.
Evictions have also cost lives. In 2021, 2,051 families were reported evicted from Dhalpur and Gorukhuti in Darrang, and two villagers were killed in police firing during the operation. Two protesters were killed in police firing at Kasutoli, near Guwahati, in September 2024.
In Goalpara, some 2,700 structures were reportedly demolished in July 2025. On 17 July, five days after the Paikan eviction, a 19-year-old, Sakuar Ali, was shot dead when police fired on evicted people and protesters. His family has sought an FIR against the police. Goalpara's district commissioner said forest guards and police were attacked with sticks and stones and that police fired in response.
These competing accounts call for an independent inquiry.
The State's Case
The government's position is that these are anti-encroachment drives on forest, government and village grazing land. After the October operations, an official told reporters that families who had approached the court saw their claims rejected, and that the drive resumed only after meeting all legal requirements.
The state has also welcomed a Gauhati High Court ruling on forest encroachment, and advocate Santanu Borthakur has argued that living on forest land, however long, does not by itself create a right to settle there permanently.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly framed the issue as one of illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the protection of indigenous land. That is a legitimate policy debate. The difficulty lies in how the two arguments are joined.
Two Legal Questions, Treated as One
Encroachment and citizenship are separate legal questions. Whether someone occupies government land is a matter of land law. Whether someone is a foreigner is decided through Foreigners Tribunals and the citizenship process that followed the NRC, not by a demolition order.
Many of those evicted held pattas (land titles issued by the state), ration cards and voter IDs, and had settled 50 to 60 years ago after the Brahmaputra's erosion took their earlier homes. If that is accurate for a significant share of cases, the label "Bangladeshi" is doing legal work that no tribunal has performed.
Poor families displaced by erosion are often labelled "Bangladeshis", "outsiders" or "encroachers", and residents say this happens without any proof being required. Critics argue such rhetoric deepens communal polarisation and leaves Muslim communities facing displacement more vulnerable.
Land Cleared, and Who Received it
In Dhubri, the Assam Tribune reported in January 2026 that evictions had resumed to make way for an Adani Power thermal project, with title-holders objecting. Sources differ on the plant's size (3,200 MW in some reports, 3,400 MW in others).
Activists also point to large allocations to corporate projects, including 515 acres for Tata's semiconductor facility, 3,624 bighas for Patanjali in Chirang, 3,000 bighas for a JK Lakshmi Cement subsidiary and a proposed 6,000-acre Reliance-linked solar project.
The pattern deserves scrutiny, but a careful report must establish whether the allocated plots are the same ones that were cleared. That link has been asserted more often than documented.
Activists argue the net result is that vulnerable families, disproportionately Muslim, lose their homes and livelihoods while corporations gain access to vast landholdings.
The Selectivity Question
Displaced residents have alleged that Hindu families and temples in the same areas were left untouched, according to Global Voices. Muslims were reportedly the overwhelming majority of those affected, and several reports put their share above 90 percent in areas including Dhalpur, Lumding, Pabha, Hasila Beel and Kachutoli. Yet there is no public, religion-disaggregated dataset of evictions.
Without one, the claim of selective enforcement cannot be proved or disproved, and the government has not published such data. Obtaining district-wise figures on who was evicted, who held documents and who was resettled, through RTI applications or Assembly replies, is the single most useful step for future reporting.
Rhetoric and Timing
On 27 January 2026, Sarma said that if a rickshaw fare is Rs 5, people should pay Rs 4, and that his work was to cause hardship to "Miya" people, according to The Wire. He also said 4–5 lakh "Miya voters" would be removed from the rolls during SIR. He later described the remarks as symbolic and denied calling for a social boycott.
Activist Harsh Mander filed a complaint at Hauz Khas police station in Delhi. A video then circulated of a woman paying a rickshaw puller Rs 4 instead of Rs 20. A chief minister's words matter when he also controls the machinery of enforcement.
Timing also invites questions. The Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election was held on 6 October 2026, and on 9 October BJP's Devasish Sharma won by about 1.72 lakh votes over AIUDF's Badruddin Ajmal, in a constituency reported to be roughly 61 percent Muslim. Eviction operations followed on 17 and 18 October, and an official described them as a resumption.
Commentators quoted by PTI in August 2025 had already argued that the drives were meant to shape a political narrative. Timing is not proof of motive, and the government has given legal reasons for each operation, but the sequence is worth recording.
What the Law and Rights Framework say
The Supreme Court has read Article 21 to include a right to shelter and livelihood, which makes eviction without rehabilitation constitutionally vulnerable. In November 2024, in its bulldozer judgment, the Court laid down notice and hearing safeguards for demolitions, with exceptions for unauthorised structures on public land and for court-ordered removals. The state can rely on those exceptions; critics argue that long-settled, document-holding families sit uneasily within them.
Internationally, India is a party to the ICESCR, whose General Comment 7 requires genuine consultation, adequate notice and no eviction that renders people homeless. The UDHR's Article 25, on an adequate standard of living including housing, is a declaration and not a binding treaty. Reports also describe children dropping out of school after evictions, which engages Article 21A, the right to education.
After the Bulldozers
The most consistent finding across reports is the absence of rehabilitation. In Lakhimpur and Golaghat, families reportedly received no alternative land. In Hasila Beel, the Gauhati High Court intervened to order basic amenities for displaced families.
In Dhubri, residents said the resettlement land offered was low-lying riverbank. Many of those displaced were already erosion victims, so a second displacement compounds the first.
Conclusion
The state is entitled to protect forest and public land, and courts have upheld some of its actions. But legal permissibility is not the same as justice. Three questions remain open:
- Whether claims of long residence and valid documents were examined before demolition,
- Whether enforcement was applied equally across communities, and
- Why rehabilitation remains the exception
Publishing district-wise data on evictions, documents held and resettlement would let the public judge the policy on evidence rather than on rhetoric.
[The writer, Razia Masood is Bhopal based Journalist and Activist.]
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