Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed on Tuesday that the indigenous communities of the state are facing “invasion” from people of “one religion”, who are allegedly encroaching on land in different parts to alter the demography of those areas.

He said the government’s eviction drives, through which over 1.19 lakh bighas have been cleared since 2021, are a major step towards checking this alleged attempt by migrants to gain a political foothold in Assamese-majority areas.

The chief minister did not specify who was making this alleged attempt, but most of the evicted people are Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Addressing a press conference here, Sarma said that it has been found while conducting eviction drives that the encroachers are mostly people with own land in their native districts, and yet they move to settle illegally in distant parts of the state.

“Forest destruction is one of the issues. These people migrate to change the demography of that place,” he claimed.

Sarma said that as these people migrate from one part of the state and settle in another part, they enrol themselves as voters in the new place.

And once they grow in numbers to thousands, they become a sizable vote bank, and the political leaders do not act against their initial encroachment of forest or government land, the chief minister claimed.

“All these people are of one religion,” he said, without elaborating.

“This is not just a land jihad, but a jihad to finish off the Assamese people. After demographic invasion in lower and middle Assam, it is now happening in upper Assam,” the chief minister said.

Sarma alleged that these encroachers have been enjoying the patronage of the Congress.

“We see that in a place, votes secured by the Congress go up suddenly. If we calculate this increase in numbers, it will be the same as the demographic change that has taken place there,” he claimed.

Sarma added that it is for the district commissioner to strike out the names of the encroachers once evicted from the local voter list, as their names already appear in their native districts within the state.

When asked if a special intensive revision of the electoral roll could help in detecting illegal settlers, Sarma said it would not serve the purpose in this context of demographic change.

The updated National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is yet to be notified, will also not help in this regard, as it is apprehended that names of foreigners have been included in it due to “lack of government mechanism” in certain areas to check it, he added.

“The answer to checking this attempt at demographic change is an uncompromising government and leadership who will work to evict them,” Sarma asserted.

He said 1,19,548 bighas (160 sq km) of land has been cleared of encroachment since his government took over in May 2021.

Of these, 84,743 bighas are forest land and 26,713 bighas are ‘khas’ or general government land, among other categories of land cleared, the chief minister added.

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