Settling the Assam land question

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma mulling a new “bold law” to restrict the sale and purchase of land to families who appear in the 1951 voter list or National Register of Citizens (NRC) in select revenue circles like undivided Goalpara has triggered fresh hopes of preventing land grabbing by immigrant settlers. Publication of a correct NRC free from names of illegal Bangladeshi migrants will be critical to implementation of the proposed law. Chief Minister Sarma exuded confidence that such legal measures will enable Assamese and other indigenous people to fight demographic change. The Assam Assembly has already passed the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Second Amendment) Bill, 2024, to create heritage belts and blocks for reserving the sale and purchase of land within a 5 km radius of iconic structures for the “original inhabitants,” implying for those who have been living there for at least three generations. Lessons must be learnt for the failures of past governments in protecting tribal belts and blocks from encroachment by immigrant settlers as well as non-tribal people. Expeditious implementation of Mission Basundhara 3.0, which would be launched on October 2, will be crucial to streamline land records and digitise land and revenue records. Disposal of 7 lakh applications of the total 8.13 lakh applications received under the flagship mission marks an important milestone in fast tracking delivery of land-related issues online and land settlement to indigenous people. The Chief Minister has rightly said that if the circle officers do not feel the pulses of the spirit with which the state government has been working to protect the land rights of indigenous people, then no power can save the Assamese. The Revenue Department must fix the accountability of all officials and employees tasked with carrying out land surveys and land settlements in accordance with amended laws and treat the protection of land rights of indigenous people as a national duty and not just the administrative duty of all government employees involved in land-related matters. Stringent punitive action against any official or employee found to have been involved in illegal land transfer execution will have a deterrent action. If alienation of indigenous people from their land due to encroachment and land grabbing by immigrant settlers cannot be checked, then there will be irreversible consequences, which will precipitate the existential threat to indigenous people. The state government has been consulting legal experts to evolve means to delete the names of ineligible applicants who managed to get their names enrolled by forgery of documents. The government will also have to ensure that the names of indigenous people who have been excluded due to errors committed by officials are included in the final updated list. Assam getting a correct updated NRC without a single name of an illegal Bangladeshi migrant is critical to protecting the language, culture, and heritage of indigenous people in the state. The document will help in the in the identification of illegal Bangladeshi migrants, provided reverification is carried out to detect all illegal entries in the updated draft and the final list is notified. It will also help delete the names of all illegal migrants from the electoral rolls in the state. That the electoral rolls could not be made free from illegal Bangladeshi migrants even after nearly four decades of signing of the Assam Accord speaks volumes about how, apart from land alienation, indigenous people have also been facing the problem of losing their political supremacy due to faulty electoral rolls containing names of illegal Bangladeshis through forgery of documents. There are about 1.2 lakh doubtful voters (D-voters) in the state, while more than the names of 19 lakh NRC applicants were excluded from the updated published final draft list. These figures are indicative of electoral rolls in the state containing more names of illegal Bangladeshi migrants who are alleged to have systematically increased their number in different assemblies and parliamentary constituencies. The delimitation exercise facilitated redrawing the constituency boundary in a manner that in at least 94 constituencies, indigenous people will be able to exercise their political supremacy, preventing immigrant settlers from getting elected. There is, however, no scope for any complacency, because if the demographic composition in the constituency keeps changing due to settlement of immigrant settlers in these constituencies, then the gains of delimitation exercise would be lost. Besides, even if these constituencies are preserved for indigenous people through constitutional amendments, the immigrant settlers will play the deciding role if their numbers keep increasing due to a lack of any check in their settlement in core constituencies of indigenous people. Enactment of the “bold law,” which is aimed at preventing land alienation of indigenous people, is a landmark initiative to correct historic wrongs of past governments and leaders. Relooking at the land question in Assam from the perspective of protecting the interests of indigenous people is an urgent need of the hour.