On July 8, bulldozers rolled into villages under the Chapar Revenue Circle of Assam’s Dhubri district, Charuabakhra, Chirakuta Part I and II, kicking off one of the state’s most aggressive eviction drives in recent memory. At the heart of the operation is a proposed 3,000-MW thermal power plant by the Adani Group, for which the state government plans to clear around 4,000 bighas of land.
“These lands will host a Rs 40,000 crore project. Tenders will be issued soon,” Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said at a press conference on June 22.
But the land in question is not barren. These are villages inhabited by more than 2,500 families, many of whom have lived there for generations, others who settled after their homes were swallowed by the Brahmaputra due to decades of riverbank erosion. These communities, mostly landless, economically marginalised Muslim families, have now been rendered homeless yet again.
Inhabitants say they were given barely 48 hours to dismantle their lives. No formal notices, no rehabilitation plans, no time to carry away their belongings. Some resistance was seen, but was met with massive police deployment, reportedly in the thousands, and dozens of bulldozers. The eviction drive wiped out homes, belongings, schools, a medical sub-centre, and power supply to the area. Schooling and medical services have ground to a halt.
Among the land being cleared, about 1,000 bighas is reportedly owned by patta (land-title) holders, who are being offered Rs 50,000 compensation and relocation, but even this is being questioned as woefully inadequate. “How can Rs 50,000 compensate for generations of stability, for homes, for access to land and schools?” asked one resident, while speaking to The Scroll.
Echoes of resistance in Bodoland
This is not the first time this patch of Assam has seen attempts to clear land for corporate interests. Earlier, a similar tract in the Parbatjhora area of the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) was marked for acquisition. But that land fell under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, offering protections to tribal areas. Strong opposition from the Bodo community, backed by segments of Assamese civil society, forced the government to halt the project—at least temporarily.
But in Dhubri, where the displaced are mostly Bengali-origin Muslims without political clout or Sixth Schedule protection, the bulldozers moved unhindered.
Goalpara: Second front of displacement
While homes were being razed in Dhubri, another front of mass eviction was underway in Goalpara district. On June 16, authorities cleared over 1,500 bighas of land in Hasila Beel, displacing 667 families and demolishing homes, shops, five lower primary schools, and a Jal Jeevan Mission water project.
Just weeks later, on July 12, eviction resumed in the Paikan Reserve Forest (PRF), a legally protected forest under the Krishnai Range. Officials said the land was notified as a reserve forest in 1982, but the Goalpara Lawyers’ Association has argued that forest rights claims of thousands living in the area remain unresolved. In 2022, they submitted a memorandum demanding compliance with the Assam Forest Regulation of 1891 and a proper settlement process before evictions.
That call went unheeded.
On July 12, 1,080 families, again largely Bengali-origin Muslims, were evicted. Officials confirmed that 2,700 structures were torn down using 40 bulldozers, with over 1,000 police personnel on site. While the administration claimed the operation was “peaceful,” rights groups argue that “peace” enforced by overwhelming force is not consent, and certainly not justice.
Lawyers and local leaders like Jiten Das and Wazed Ali spoke to The Scroll and pointed out that 472 villages in Goalpara have been lost to erosion over four decades, leaving thousands of displaced people with no alternative but to settle in forest or wetland zones. “These people did not invade the land. They escaped disaster and tried to survive,” said a local advocate, as per the report.
A pattern of targeting the vulnerable
In just a month, five major eviction drives have been carried out in four Assam districts, namely Dhubri, Lakhimpur, Nalbari and Goalpara displacing nearly 3,500 families, most of which are Bengali-origin Muslims. In every case, the pattern is disturbingly familiar: bulldozers arrive with little notice, security forces outnumber the unarmed residents, and no meaningful rehabilitation is offered.
The opposition has strongly criticised the government’s actions, calling the eviction policy arbitrary, anti-poor, and communally biased. There is growing concern that migrant Bengali-speaking Muslims are being selectively targeted, branded as “encroachers” or “illegal foreigners”, despite often having lived on the land for decades, even generations.
Many of the affected areas, such as the Brahmaputra basin and wetlands like Hasila Beel, have become refuge zones for communities displaced by environmental collapse. Now, they are being displaced again—this time by the bulldozer in service of “development.”
Bulldozing justice
The humanitarian cost of these operations is staggering: children pulled out of school, medical services shuttered, families forced to live under tarpaulins, and a future reduced to rubble. No comprehensive resettlement plan exists. No legal forum appears to be actively hearing the residents’ claims.
What the Assam government brands as a victory for industrial growth is, for the displaced, a catastrophic collapse of rights, dignity, and survival. And as bulldozers pave the way for corporate projects like Adani’s, what remains buried beneath the newly cleared land are the broken dreams of the very people who built their lives there—one flood, one setback, one shelter at a time.
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