Overview

• In his August 15 Independence Day address, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said 1.2 lakh bighas of encroached land have been reclaimed and vowed that evictions “will NOT STOP” until all unauthorized holdings are cleared.
• He framed the campaign as a fight against “land jihad” and repeatedly referred to encroachers as “unknown people” or “infiltrators,” terms understood to target Bengali-speaking Muslims.
• State revenue data shows that since 2016, 15,270 families—majority Muslim—have been evicted from government land, with at least eight Muslims shot dead during clearance operations.
• Sarma blamed previous governments and their bureaucracy for a “mind-boggling scale of encroachment” and warned that officials who fail to prevent land grabs will face action.
• He defended recent assembly constituency delimitation as essential to secure indigenous political representation for decades to come.