Oppose land distribution to workers, lose incentives: Assam CM to tea planters

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, on Thursday (January 1, 2026), threatened to withdraw all incentives given to tea estate owners if they oppose the move to grant land rights to their workers.

The State government brought legislation in November 2025 to make tea garden workers the owners of the land they occupy in the ‘labour lines’ of the tea estates. Labour lines are rows of dwellings for plantation workers in specified sections of a tea estate.

The Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings (Amendment) Act seeks to remove the labour lines from the “ancillary land” category in tea estates. The government claimed that this would guarantee “land protection” for 3.33 lakh tea worker families across 825 tea estates in the State.

“The tea workers have the right to land after 200 years of living in Assam,” the Chief Minister said.

“The response of the tea garden owners [to land distribution] is not very positive. We shall withdraw the incentives to the planters, who do not cooperate with the government in this regard,” he said.

The government provides various incentives to the tea estates worth ₹150 crore annually, Mr Sarma said.

British tea planters had brought Adivasis from central India in the 1800s to work in the tea plantations. The workers, belonging to Santhal, Kol, Bhil, Munda, and at least 90 other communities, are referred to as “tea tribes” in Assam.

One of six communities demanding Scheduled Tribe status, the “tea tribes” and “ex-tea tribes” (generations of people no longer associated with tea gardens) comprise about 18% of Assam’s voters. They are said to have gravitated from Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Party over the past decade.

Many tea planters in Assam are unhappy with the government’s decision to “arm-twist” them into parting with their estate land. They argue that the State government had acquired large areas from the tea gardens under the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1956, and allowed these estates to retain land only for special cultivation of tea and ancillary purposes (factory, houses, hospitals, etc.).

“…the land now available with the tea estates is residual land after surrendering the surplus land. Therefore, any further acquisition would adversely affect the long-term viability of the tea sector…,” the Consultative Committee of Planters’ Associations (CCPA) said in reaction to the government’s move.

The CCPA, covering tea, coffee, rubber, and cardamom planters, pointed out that the Assam Plantation Labour Rules exclude the earmarking of any garden land to be apportioned as “patta” to be distributed. It also said that labour quarters and line areas are part of the statutory facilities mandated under the Plantation Labour Act, 1951, and cannot be converted into transferable land ownership.