{"id":150942,"date":"2025-07-24T15:59:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T22:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=150942"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:59:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T22:59:25","slug":"are-asomiyas-facing-a-bleak-future-in-their-homeland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/07\/24\/are-asomiyas-facing-a-bleak-future-in-their-homeland\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Asomiyas facing a bleak future in their homeland !"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nava Thakuria<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The indigenous population in Assam of northeast\u00a0India continues getting shocking revelations every alternate day from none other than State chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. Pursuing a series of eviction drives to reclaim hundreds of thousands of bighas of government lands (including forest and water bodies) during his term as the head of Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Dispur, Sarma alerted Asomiyas on the fastest changing demography in their localities. The outspoken saffron leader made it public that a conspiracy was hatched to silently change the janagathani (demography) which needs to be halted effectively.
“After demographic invasion in western and middle Assam, today we are seeing the beginning of demographic invasion in eastern Assam. If we could have visualized the demographic invasion of lower and middle Assam in the beginning, we probably could have stopped it. But it has become irreversible now,\u201d said Sarma, adding that evictions in various places to reclaim a huge volume of government lands were aimed at preventing the demographic invasion by the people from a particular community (read Bangladesh origin Muslims). Terming the trend as \u2018land jihad\u2019, Sarma proclaimed that the government remains committed to liberate every inch of Assam’s land from the encroachment.
Lately, Sarma has made a stunning revelation that by 2041 the Muslims in Assam will acquire over 50% stakes in its total population. As per the 2011 census 34 percent of the State population (3.12 crore) remains a religious minority and if \u00a03 % are identified as \u00a0indigenous Assamese \u00a0Muslims the rest (31 %) can be termed as migrated Muslims (from Bangladesh to \u00a0Assam). As the Muslims enjoy high birth-rates, the situation will be worse by \u00a02021 or 2031 and they (Bengali- speaking Muslims) will touch \u00a050 % of Assam\u2019s total populace by 2041, he asserted. The situation has already turned horrible for indigenous (Asomiya) people in many districts of Assam like Dhubri, Morigaon, Barpeta, Nagaon, \u00a0South Salmara-Mankachar, Goalpara, etc. Once the Asomiyas become a minority in those localities, they have to live under insecurities and constant threats from the Bangladesh-origin Muslim settlers.
The \u00a0eviction drives in Barshola, Lumding, Burapahar, Pabha, Batadrawa, Chapar and Paikan localities have resulted \u00a0in recovering 1,19,548 bighas of land from the clutches of \u00a0illegal settlers. However, Sarma reminded that nearly \u00a063 lakh acres of land remain under encroachment across Assam. It may take another 20 years to make Assam completely \u00a0free of encroachment. However, the prime opposition party Congress vehemently opposed the drive and approached State \u00a0Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya with an appeal to halt the ongoing eviction operations. Calling on Governor Acharya, the Assam Congress delegation sought his intervention against the dispossession of tribal, indigenous, minorities and other people from their rightful properties on the pretext of development\u2019.
However, the operations against the encroachers \u00a0went on in full swing, even though the situation in Paikan flared up on 17 July as a group of Assam police personnel and forest guards were attacked during their post-eviction works. A large number of evicted individuals including women started stone pelting over the forces, where 21 personnel sustained injuries. Finally to maintain the law & order situation, the police \u00a0resorted to firing upon the unruly aggressors. It resulted in one casualty (Shakuar Hussain) and injuries to a few others. Assam police lately arrested over 20 violent agitators from Paikan suspecting their roles in the post-eviction violence.
State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi along with their national president Mallikarjun Kharge and \u00a0Parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi attended a party meeting at Chaygaon on 16 July. They all slammed the government for the eviction drives and assured that the displaced families will be allotted land and houses if the party comes to power after 2026 Assam legislative assembly polls. Sarma hit back on them stating that Gandhi came to Assam only to encourage the encroachers to occupy protected forest lands. Gandhi\u2019s \u00a0irresponsible rhetoric has directly endangered lives and disrupted peace in the State, he stated. Earlier, All India United Democratic Front and All Assam Minority Students\u2019 Union, Muslim Sangram Parishad, Asom Nagarik Samaj, Raijor Dal, Asom Jatiya Parishad, Communist Party of India, CPI-ML, etc also criticized the government for the eviction drives with separate protest demonstrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nava Thakuria The indigenous population in Assam of northeast\u00a0India continues getting shocking revelations every alternate day from none other than State chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. Pursuing a series of eviction drives to reclaim hundreds of thousands of bighas of government lands (including forest and water bodies) during his term as the head of Bharatiya […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nava-thakuria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}