On 16 July a CPIML fact-finding team visited Ashudubi village in the same district where more than 1100 houses were demolished by employing at gunpoint more than 60 bulldozers. The team consisted of Member of Parliament Sudama Prasad, party’s Assam State Secretary Bibek Das, central committee members Manoj Manzil, ex-MLA from Bihar, and Balindra Saikia along with Pankaj Kumar Das, Anant Hazarika and Subhash Singh. The team observed that many trenches had been dug by bulldozers surrounding the village to prevent any humanitarian help for the homeless villagers. The victims are poor peasants and working class Muslim families who were living in this village for 60-70 years. It is also reported that one person Sheikh Monirul Islam committed suicide under desperation after the eviction notice was served to him. Another person, Anaruddin Sheikh died of a heart attack while his house was being demolished.
The team said that the eviction drive on 12 July 2025 was conducted in a war like manner in violation of the Guwahati High Court directive that prohibits evictions without any rehabilitation measures. The area under Ashudubi has been inhabited for many decades also housing so many government buildings, but to justify evictions this was renamed Paikan only to associate it with the reserve forest of the same name.
Over the past two months, the Assam government has launched a renewed, aggressive campaign of evictions, violently displacing Muslims and indigenous communities from lands they have lived on for decades. In Goalpara, Dhubri, Charuabakhra, Chirakuta, Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao, Kamrup (Rural), Kokrajhar, and other regions, thousands of families are under threat of being uprooted without any legal process, rehabilitation, or basic humanitarian support. Homes, Anganwadi centres, pharmacies, schools, mosques, madrasas, Eidgahs, and even government infrastructure have been bulldozed, shattering lives and livelihoods.
How did so many areas, where people have lived for decades and where government schemes, welfare services, schools, and public infrastructure have existed, suddenly become “illegal”?
Communal Ploy and Corporate Plunder
These widespread demolitions clearly shows that all talks of illegal infiltration are a ploy by the BJP regime to stroke communal polarization and divert focus from its plans to evict poor, indigenous communities and Muslims for corporate land grab. By repeatedly invoking the bogey of ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’, the Himanta Biswa Sarma government is trying to instil fear, communalise the atmosphere, and silence all voices against the inhuman eviction drive.
In the last four years of Himanta Biswa Sarma government thousands of families, mostly Bengali speaking Muslims, have been evicted with over 1.19 lakh bighas (160 sq km) of lands having been cleared. Many people have lost lives during these eviction drives and lakhs are rendered homeless. Himanta's islamophobic hate campaign by invoking land jihad continues with the open declaration of changing the state's demography.
It is important to note that the evictions escalated aggressively after the Advantage Assam 2.0 investor summit in February and the Rising Northeast Investors’ Summit in May.
It is no coincidence that these demolitions are concentrated in areas where major corporate projects are now being planned. In Dhubri and Goalpara, 4,000 bighas are being cleared for a 3,000-MW thermal power plant by the Adani Group. In Dima Hasao, land is being handed over to Adani for a cement factory. In Kokrajhar, Adani is constructing a power project. In Karbi Anglong, Reliance is setting up compressed biogas plants.
These eviction drives must be stopped and the government must provide full rehabilitation and humanitarian assistance to all displaced families. A court-monitored high-level inquiry be initiated into the police violence, and all perpetrators be brought to justice.
