Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Tamuli Gaon, a village in eastern Assam’s Jorhat district, is about 40 kilometres west of neighbouring Sivasagar district’s Bihubar, the epicentre of destruction by one of Assam’s worst localised floods since the 1950s. The gushing waters that submerged much of Sivasagar and adjoining Charaideo districts on July 19–20 lost momentum by the time they reached the periphery of Tamuli Gaon, but inundated the surrounding, low-lying paddy fields, to turn this village of 110 families into an island.

The village’s Biju Kumar Sarmah, a teacher nicknamed Gospuli for his obsession with plantation drives to “reclaim what’s lost”, explains why Tamuli Gaon was spared. “The water did not have enough force to cut through the embankments in our area, unlike those a few kilometres to the east, toward Sivasagar district,” he says. He is not sure whether the distance from Bihubar would provide Tamuli Gaon with insurance against a bigger disaster, with at least two more months of rain to go this year. “The floodwaters have less than half the distance to travel from Bihubar to Tamuli Gaon than from Mon to Bihubar,” he says.

Mon, the headquarters of Nagaland’s district of the same name, bore the brunt of extremely heavy rainfall that drenched parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Nagaland from July 18 to 22. The rainfall triggered landslides, killing 11 people in Mon town, and large volumes of water from five major rivers and numerous streams originating in Mon district gushed downstream, carrying earth and debris, to swamp more than 80% of Sivasagar and Charaideo districts.

“The water trickled in gently around noon on July 19. It suddenly became a mahapralay (total destruction), and before we could understand what was happening, we were being thrashed about in neck-deep water,” says Shivraj Sharma of Bihubar Nepalikhuti, a village near the Assam-Nagaland border that was home to some 200 families of mostly dairy farmers. 

Nepalikhuti is close to the Dikhow River and along the axis of the road connecting Mon to Naginimora, a border town in Nagaland that thrives on coal mining and trade. Several stretches of this road were almost erased by the overflowing Dikhow.

Sharma and other members of his family clambered atop their tin-roofed house to save themselves, watching helplessly as a few villagers were swept past, flailing their arms to grab anything to anchor them. As the water level kept rising, the Sharma family — drenched from the incessant rainfall and without food for two days — feared meeting a watery grave like their cattle. “Our tethered cows could have survived if we had the time to cut the ropes,” he says. 

When the floodwaters receded, Bihubar Nepalikhuti was under at least 4 feet of silt with branches of trees, upturned furniture, household appliances, clothes, books, bags, footwear, utensils, mattresses, and bloated carcasses of livestock sticking out from the surface.

Silt-smeared refrigerators, television sets, two-wheelers, sofa sets, packaged foods, and other items continue to flank a 19-km road from Bihubar to Simaluguri, where floodwaters caused extensive damage to an arterial railway track, snapping train services between eastern Assam and the rest of the State for almost a fortnight. 

The road was largely cleared a fortnight later, but most houses and structures on either side continued to be enveloped in debris. Septuagenarian Habibur Rahman recalls a “terrifying sound” as the floodwaters approached their house at Santak Bihubar village, snapping trees and slicing through anything in the way. “I don’t know when we can go back to our house. I no longer have the money and the energy to clear the head-high debris from our house,” he says.

The ordeal has been similar or worse for Moromi Bora Bordoloi of Bihubar Siloni Majgaon, Ranjit Gogoi of Charing Gogoi Ali, Pithuram Konwar of Dighalijan, and Jatin Saikia of Bhitoruwal Gaon. “We were just not prepared, maybe because we are not used to such water fury,” Bordoloi, a weaver-homemaker, says.

Caught unaware

The Sivasagar, Charaideo, and Jorhat district authorities, too, were caught unawares by the deluge. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, after touring the flood-hit districts, admitted that the administration in each could not mobilise rescue and relief operations for seven days since the disaster struck. He said this was understandable, as these districts do not have a history of major floods and the authorities were not as disaster-ready as other districts that experience floods regularly.

These three districts accounted for 71 of the 99 people who died in the floods across 16 districts from April to August 8, 2026, and more than 94% of some 7.21 lakh flood-affected people. The scale of the disaster across much of the 4,426 sq. km covered by the three districts is perhaps comparable to the 11-day flooding of southern Assam’s Silchar town in June 2022, with water levels rising to 12 feet in some areas. There’s a difference though: Silchar is prone to flooding or water-logging, often fleetingly, unlike Charaideo or Sivasagar.

Disaster management experts explained why the government machinery was underprepared in the three districts. “There’s a flaw in the government’s approach to disaster management, which is to identify risks and concentrate on high-risk areas. The planning needs to change. If low or zero-risk areas become high-risk overnight, there’s very little people can do, as was the case with the three districts,” says Partha Jyoti Das, a climate, water, and disaster specialist with Assam-based biodiversity conservation group Aaranyak. He adds that getting the right people for climate-smart or climate-resilient flood management is crucial. “Ditto with factoring in fluctuating climate change scenarios in everything to minimise disasters.”

According to the 2018 Climate Vulnerability Assessment prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati and IIT-Mandi in collaboration with Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science, Assam was the most vulnerable State in the Indian Himalayan region. 

The 2021 index of the same assessment ranked Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Bihar as the States most vulnerable to extreme climate events and hydro-meteorological disasters. The index analysed 640 districts in India and found that 463 of these were vulnerable to extreme floods, droughts, and cyclones, and that more than 80% of the country’s population resides in districts highly exposed to climate risks.

Rainfall-induced floods, landslides, and erosion indicate that people in all 35 districts in Assam are highly exposed to climate risks. Often, 25-32 districts experience floods in a year, more severe in districts perched below 88 metres, the average elevation of Sivasagar and Charaideo districts. 

This is not unusual. A combination of geography, medium-to-heavy monsoon rainfall for almost six months, and a network of silt-laden rivers has made floods an annual phenomenon in Assam. 

Experts say the pattern of flooding changed after the Assam-Tibet earthquake in 1950 triggered massive landslides across the eastern Himalayas, sending large volumes of sediment into the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries and permanently altering the river system. 

Deforestation (Assam lost about 3,600 sq. km of tree cover from 2001–2025, accelerating soil erosion and making the rivers shallower with silt), infrastructure push in the geologically young and fragile hills, ageing breach-prone river embankments, and climate change amplified the recurring disaster, often suddenly in specific areas instead of the “laahe-laahe (slow) flooding” of yore.

Hydrologists and disaster specialists are baffled by the ever-changing rainfall pattern, drenching some areas heavily and barely wetting others. For instance, while Sivasagar and Charaideo districts drowned, their western neighbours, the perennially flood-prone Morigaon and Nagaon districts, faced drought-like situations. This, perhaps, explains the monsoon paradox. 

According to the India Meteorological Department, Assam recorded a 28% rainfall deficit in June and July, while about 6,500 sq. km area on either side of the Assam-Nagaland border received up to 490% more rainfall than normal, contributing to the floods in Sivasagar and Charaideo.

Mining menace

When India’s National Green Tribunal banned Meghalaya’s hazardous rat-hole coal mining in April 2014, green activists in Assam sought attention to similar, potentially “more dangerous” activities along the State’s borders with Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. More than a decade ago, Golaghat-based activist Apurba Ballav Goswami said the water bodies in Assam linked to the Nagaland-origin Dikhow, Disang, Jhanji, and Teyap Rivers were turning acidic due to run-off from unscientifically established mines. This, he said, was foreboding for downstream areas in Assam.

A 2018 PIL (public interest litigation) filed by Congress leader Debabarata Saikia, then a Congress MLA from Nazira, in the Gauhati High Court indicated rampant coal mining was not the only source of disaster for Sivasagar and adjoining districts. It conveyed that illegal sand and stone mining and encroachment of fragile river beds were also inviting trouble. The PIL focussed on the Dikhow, Sivasagar’s lifeline-turned-sorrow, seeking an immediate ban on the potentially catastrophic riverbed mining. 

Following the court’s directive, the government sent teams from January to March 2019 to verify the allegations, concentrating on Bihubar and adjoining areas near the Assam-Nagaland border. The inquiry revealed eight stone quarries, 81 stone crushers, and the seizure of about 10,000 cubic metres of minor minerals in the area. The report described Bihubar and the surrounding areas as a hub of mining, distribution, supply, and interstate transportation. It also said that most of the gravel and boulders were transported from Nagaland.

Saikia petitioned the High Court again in 2019, arguing that illegal mining was continuing despite the damning government report, which the court had reproduced in its order. The second petition sought a specialised mining task force, a high-powered committee to study the fragile ecosystem of the Dikhow, measures to prevent changes in the river’s course, and a master plan covering illegal mining, bank erosion, drainage, and associated problems. 

In October 2019, the court directed the Assam government to constitute a dedicated Mines and Minerals Task Force Battalion and a high-level committee for river conservation, adding that it expected action within three months.

“The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government virtually ignored the directive. Unchecked stone and sand mining in the Dikhow contributed to the extensive soil erosion along its course from Nagaland. The outcome is the ordeal our district went through in July,” Saikia, from oil town Nazira near Sivasagar, says. Nazira is the Assam Asset’s headquarters of ONGC, whose office-residential complex was submerged, forcing many executives to stay in hotels and homestays on higher ground.

Sivasagar MLA and Raijor Dal president Akhil Gogoi was more vocal about the “indiscriminate” coal and stone mining. “Rainwater accumulated in the hollowed coal pits in Nagaland, eventually burst out and caused widespread devastation in Assam,” he says, also pointing to the “rape of the rivers” by the mining mafia. His Sivasagar-based party leader Manas Konwar went a step further, naming two local BJP legislators, one of them a Minister, as the kingpins of the stone and coal mining operations along the Assam-Nagaland border.

After the floods, local YouTubers and reel-makers filmed the mining activities along the border. Some of them showed several earthen roads built across the Dikhow River to facilitate the movement of trucks carrying coal, stone chips, and sand. “Built during the dry season, these roads are like multiple dams that block the water upstream, within Nagaland. The accumulated water swells during the monsoon and cuts through these dams,” a Brahmaputra Board official says, declining to be quoted. The primary role of this Board, under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is to plan, coordinate, and integrate implementation of measures to control floods, mitigate riverbank erosion, and harness water resources across the northeastern region.

While the Assam Chief Minister, speaking to the media, denied any mining activities in Assam, community-based organisations in Nagaland rejected “theories” that their hill State and their people were responsible for Assam’s floods. 

Former Nagaland minister Mmhonlumo Kikon noted reports that Nagaland’s insurgent groups are financially involved in coal mining, and that mining in Nagaland materially caused or intensified the eastern Assam floods. He also said the reports frequently move from allegations, anecdotes, and general environmental risks to an implied conclusion about criminality and flood causation without producing the evidence needed to make that connection. “A clear and thorough report on the investors from Assam or elsewhere, the market where this coal is sold, the number of challans (invoices) issued by the relevant departments in Assam, or even the Assam police record on the trucks transporting the coal would have been helpful,” he says.

Post-flood trauma

Sivasagar was formerly known as Rangpur, the administrative and political capital of the Ahoms, who ruled large swathes of Assam for 600 years until the British took control of the region in the early 1800s. Historians say Sivasagar (Charaideo was carved out of it in August 2015) was strategic for the Ahoms to administer a vast region, and that the region was relatively flood-free compared to the rest of the Brahmaputra Valley. The Ahom royal chronicles refer to flooding in and around the capital at intervals of more than a hundred years, including in 1691 and 1793.

“Sivasagar’s misery indicates that the flood cycle may have reduced (after the last one recorded 60 years ago) and become more catastrophic due to several factors, mostly man-made. The unpredictable climate change scenario is adding to this misery, making old water discharge data on which flood control measures are designed redundant,” says Bibhash Sarma, an engineering teacher and consultant to Assam’s Water Resources Department. 

Aaranyak’s Das adds that the ever-changing rainfall pattern is the new normal. “The administrative machinery must understand that no part of Assam or anywhere else in the northeast is safe from floods and associated disasters. Everyone, down to the farmer, needs to be wired to anticipate such calamities during the six rainy months in the region.”

According to disaster watchers, getting the right people for climate-smart or climate-resilient flood management will not be enough to reduce disasters in a State where living with “normal” floods has been a way of life. “Disaster preparedness has to be designed around the realisation that there is not an inch of flood-free land in Assam, and that areas considered zero- or low-risk can become high-risk overnight,” Das says. Others called for surface water management by undoing or minimising the damage done by unscientifically planned roads, flyovers, hydropower, housing, and other infrastructure projects, which have largely claimed wetlands that once acted as water sponges during floods.

The pessimism “unless corrective measures are initiated now” has sunk in among Sivasagar-Charaideo’s flood survivors. Neighbours joked about taking refuge in her house during extreme floods when Lakshmi Devi began constructing her RCC house at Bihubar Nepalikhuti in 2022. 

In 2026, more than 60 of them did take refuge on the roof of her house when the “tsunami” struck the village on July 19. “I could not imagine then that the joke would become a reality in less than four years,” she says, mourning the loss of her 10 cows. “I may have to add another floor to our house, but there’s no guarantee that the next flood will not reach the second-floor ceiling,” she adds.

District officials say the challenges in the areas returning to normality include clearing several feet of silt and debris from houses and paddy fields, sanitising the foul-smelling flood-hit areas, and ensuring adequate healthcare for livestock and people vulnerable to water- and vector-borne diseases such as Japanese encephalitis, which claimed 19 lives this year, before the floods.

The biggest challenge could be the trauma of expecting the worst in a State that recorded 160 and 181 human deaths during the 2017 and 2022 floods, respectively. “I don’t think anyone in Jorhat, Sivasagar, or Charaideo can sleep peacefully, at least during the remaining two months of the monsoon this year, if not later,” says Sarmah, whose Tamuli Gaon village is 18 km south of the Brahmaputra. “The Brahmaputra has been a bigger sorrow for Assam than the Dikhow this time, and much closer to us,” he says.

rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in

A woman goes to her house through a waterlogged area as the region faces flooding, in Sivasagar on Sunday (August 2, 2026).
| Photo Credit: ANI

BJP emerged as the single-largest party, winning 82 seats, followed by Congress in a distant second with 19 seats. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

A huge hoarding of ‘Akou ebar BJP sorkar’ (BJP government once more) greets visitors as they emerge from the Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Assam’s Guwahati. However, there’s little else giving away the fact that it’s election season here barring an odd party flag or empty booth. The road to the city is festooned with more welcome messages, flags and posters for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during one of their numerous visits to inaugurate some project or lay the foundation stone for another — a hallmark of the BJP’s signature style ‘permanent campaign’. There’s a cartographic change, this time, though.

Assembly elections LIVE: Campaigning ends in Kerala, Assam, Puducherry today

The airport area now marks the western limits of Legislative Assembly Constituency 37, Jalukbari, the seat that has sent Himanta Biswa Sarma to the Assam Assembly without fail since 2001. The 2023 delimitation exercise has left the Chief Minister with a newer set of voters to woo. Some regions from the erstwhile Guwahati West constituency have been incorporated, some ceded to adjoining Assembly segments.

Places such as Agyathuri, Mandakata and Changsari on the north bank of the Brahmaputra in Guwahati are out; and areas such as Azara, Dharapur, and Garigaon, an old village of more than 14,000 residents, are in.

Mr. Sarma filed his nomination papers on the very first day, March 20, after a massive roadshow, his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, son Nandil, and BJP’s Guwahati MP Bijuli Kalita Medhi in tow. “I first contested from Jalukbari in 1996 and lost. Since 2001, I have been winning continuously. Despite delimitation changes, I believe I will continue to receive the blessings of the people,” he said en route. Launching the second phase of the party’s Jana Ashirwad Yatra from his constituency three days later, the Chief Minister asked Jalukbari residents to bear with him given that he would be helming the campaign across the State.

With Mr. Sarma criss-crossing the State as campaigner-in-chief for the BJP-led alliance, the canvassing on home turf fell upon Ms. Sarma, who has been micromanaging things and touring the constituency extensively.

The Chief Minister is up against two other candidates, Bidisha Neog of the Congress and Dipika Das of the Bhumi Adhikar Party, contesting as an Independent. Ms. Neog, a grassroots worker who worked at Gauhati University, has struck a combative note, hitting out at the BJP workers for alleged violence at a bike rally in the Pandu area and petitioning the Election Commission to cancel Mr. Sarma’s candidature for “deliberate, wilful and corrupt non-disclosure and suppression of assets and liabilities, including assets situated outside India”.

A win for Mr. Sarma is, however, well-nigh a foregone conclusion. Seated beside the Shri Dol Gobindo Mandir in Garal Baruapara, Dharapur, Jugal Das, a teacher at the local lower primary school, and Girish Chandra Das, a retired bank officer, beam with pride at the prospect of the Chief Minister representing them in the Assembly. They claim he will cast his vote at a school in their area.

Assam Election 2026: What BJP and Congress promise in their manifestos

Grooming Garigaon

Messrs Das are already sold on the idea of ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma, MLA, Jalukbari’, but the challenge for the BJP is to ensure healthy numbers in order to match or better the CM’s six-figure margin from 2021. This is where Garigaon comes into play. Part of the peri-urban expansion of Guwahati, Garigaon and its fringes count caste Hindu Assamese and Bengali-origin Muslims among residents but it’s khilonjia or tholuwa (‘indigenous’) Muslims who make up the majority.

“We are older than the Ahoms [who came to Assam in the medieval times and ruled for almost 600 years]. There’s a mazar (shrine) of a Sufi saint in Garigaon that dates back to 700 AD,” claims Hukum Shan Ali Boxi, the local councillor who was aligned with the Assam Jatiya Parishad earlier but is now firmly with the ruling party.

The party machinery has been put to work, he says. Membership has swelled in recent months and the area is witness to daily door-to-door campaigns and corner meets ahead of polling day, April 9. The Chief Minister’s wife addressed a sizeable gathering at the local Idgah ground on April 3 besides visiting a nearby namghar [a community prayer hall for followers of Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankardeva].

There are visible changes in Garigaon since the 2023 delimitation: paved roads with street lights lined alongside. “The local youth clubs, graveyard and madrasa have received funds too,” says Taher Ali, who runs a corner shop. “Many women are beneficiaries of the Orunodoi monthly financial assistance scheme,” he adds.

Mr. Boxi says the development work is translating into votes: “The party got more than 1,000 votes from the area in the 2024 Lok Sabha election as against only 200-odd votes earlier.”

Iman Ali, in his seventies and a new member of the BJP Bishwabidyalaya Mandal Minority Morcha, concedes some old loyalists may still vote for the Congress. “We should deem ourselves fortunate that we now have the opportunity to elect our own Chief Minister. Mama [as Mr. Sarma is popularly called] is winning anyway. It’s a question of whether we join him or stay on the sidelines,” he says.

Published – April 07, 2026 12:09 pm IST

You were an adviser to the regional party Raijor Dal during its early days before dissociating yourself. Why then did you issue appeals for the Opposition to come together this Assembly election?

I used to be adviser but Akhil Gogoi [Raijor Dal chief] refused to have any truck with the Congress, which allied with the AIUDF and other parties in the previous election. Since I was supporting the alliance, I felt it unethical to remain with Akhil Gogoi and resigned.

Things have changed a lot since then. This time, I had this notion of an Opposition unity quite early. We had an all-Assam citizens’ convention in Guwahati last year and told political parties that they could draw strength from each other and the electorate is much more likely to support such an alliance than individual parties. To our delight they agreed, but it took a pretty long time. They are holding joint campaign meetings everywhere now.

How are the new regional parties different from their 1980s predecessor, Asom Gana Parishad?

The AGP got completely exposed during the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act agitation. Its MP Biren Baishya made a fiery speech against the Act in Rajya Sabha but [later] raised his hand in support. The party remained with the BJP but said they would continue to struggle against the CAA. It has become law and apparently they are still against it. The All Assam Students’ Union also lost most of its clout due to a similar position.

Has the political discourse today has touched a new low? We have never heard the pejorative term ‘Miya’ being bandied about so freely in the past as now.

During the Assam Movement, some diehard supporters used the word among themselves. But it was never a part of the public rhetoric. The Chief Minister [Himanta Biswa Sarma] goes on saying I am not going to allow the ‘Miyas’ to rest and I shall harass them as much as I can, this is why I became CM. Imagine a Chief Minister saying something like this.

As part of a group of concerned citizens, you moved the courts over the alleged hate speeches. The next High Court hearing is scheduled for April 21.

Since this is the incumbent Chief Minister, the court should have said something about it. Some steps should have been taken to restrain him in the meantime. The hearing has been postponed to a very safe date.

There hasn’t been much forward movement since the 2019 National Register of Citizens excluded 19.06 lakh people…

This is begging for an answer for a long time. It’s been seven years. Neither has the government accepted it nor rejected it on some rational ground. It was NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela’s brainchild, how to ensure that real citizens find entry by considering the legacy data. They were so strict that even natives had to suffer a lot. My own citizenship was confirmed after several visits to the NRC centre. The NRC is sound. There is no evidence of corruption, mismanagement. The BJP says there are lakhs and lakhs of Bangladeshis in the NRC and they are going to correct it. They should bring evidence.

The citizenship issue raises the question, who is an indigenous Assamese that Clause 6 of the Assam Accord seeks Constitutional protections for?

That is a riddle I have not been able to solve. There is a sense among people that some are more native, others are not, but it’s a question of citizenship. There is scope for migrants from other States to come and settle here. Are they indigenous? No. It is a very complicated term and concept. It cannot be applied in legal terms.

You facilitated talks between the Government of India and ULFA over 15 years ago. To all intents and purposes, has militancy run its course?

I remember when I was studying in Delhi in 1959-60. There were students from Andhra Pradesh, Punjab in the hostel… most of these States were as poor as Assam, but they became far more developed and richer. Assam does have a grievance against the Centre and I share it too. Given this background, extremist regionalism does rear its head from time to time. But you have to be callow to think short-term violence brings results… it never does. People bore the brunt of it. They may not take kindly to this kind of violence as they once used to.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during the inauguration of an Orchid Park at Kaziranga, in Golaghat, on March 3, 2026. Photo: X/@himantabiswa via ANI.

Representative image
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday urged Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi to defend his father, Tarun Gogoi, who was indicted by a government report in the ‘cash-for-job’ scam in state civil services recruitment. During a discussion on the Motion of Thanks on the Governor’s speech in the Assam Assembly, Mr Sarma said that he had to table the report after Congress insisted.

“I want Gaurav Gogoi that being the son of Tarun Gogoi, he must defend his father. Strangely, three days have passed since the report came out and accusations were levelled against his father, but there is no statement. These are the warriors of new Assam…Tarun Gogoi is no more, and I never wanted people to remember him associating him with corruption in APSC,” the Chief Minister said.

The report, which probed into the anomalies in the conduct of the Assam Public Service Commission’s (APSC) Combined Competitive Examination (CCE) in 2013 and 2014, was tabled in the state assembly earlier this week. The report highlighted the role of former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi in appointing the prime accused Rakesh Kumar Paul first as a member and later as chairman of the APSC.

It states that Mr Paul’s appointment was based solely on a personal application he submitted to Mr Gogoi on September 6, 2008 – without any formal selection process or background verification. The process was “ill-founded, paving the way for widespread corruption”. It also mentioned that Mr Paul made APSC a “shop selling jobs”.

It was also mentioned that Mr Paul had gifted gold jewellery to Gaurav Gogoi as a wedding gift.

The Assam Chief Minister alleged that the opposition leader did not declare to the Income Tax Department about the expensive gifts he received during his wedding.

“Anyone can receive gifts at a wedding, no problem with that. It has to be reported to Income Tax. I have read his 2014 election affidavit and this jewellery was not shown there. We all know that gift tax is 30 per cent. Gaurav has not denied taking the gifts in the last three days,” he said.

He further told the assembly that one day, he will resent a comparison document between the “dark history” of Congress tenure and BJP’s “transparent and clean” system in the recruitment process of the state.

Row over Gaurav Gogoi’s Pakistani links

In another issue, Mr Sarma also hit out at Gaurav Gogoi over his alleged Pakistan links in the state assembly.

A controversy erupted on February 12 when BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia alleged that Mr Gogoi’s wife Elizabeth Colburn shared ties with the ISI while she worked with the Climate and Knowledge Development Network in Islamabad under Ali Tauqeer Sheikh Sheikh, a former advisor to the Planning Commission of Pakistan. Mr Sarma, without naming Mr Gogoi, also raised similar accusations the same day, prompting a sharp retort from the Congress leader.

On Monday, the Chief Minister said that Ms Colburn will be probed over her alleged links with Pakistan and her alleged participation in the Lok Sabha election campaigns despite being a British citizen.

“Pakistani national Ali Sheikh against whom the state government has filed an FIR for his comments that could disturb internal harmony in the country, travelled to India at least 18 times between 2010 and 2018, Assam Police has found in its preliminary investigation. The SIT probing the matter found only in three days that Sheikh travelled multiple times to India. In the detailed investigation, we will get to know who brought him to India and who met Sheikh. This information will be revealed in the next few days,” Mr Sarma told the assembly.

He added, “The initial information I got in this matter will be very fatal for the Congress party. It will be very difficult for them to handle…The committee report was just 10 per cent. This Pak links matter is 1000 per cent and it is going to be huge.”

Guwahati:

Australia has lifted travel restrictions for Assam, while Germany is in the process of revising its advisory. However, restrictions will remain in place for four districts – Tinsukia, Charaideo, Sivasagar, and Dibrugarh – where the Disturbed Areas Act is still enforced due to the presence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA.

“I told you earlier that Australia and Germany had begun reviewing their travel advisories for Assam. Now, Australia has officially updated its guidelines, allowing travel across the state except for the four districts where AFSPA remains in effect. Previously, the advisory covered all of Assam, but now it is limited to these specific districts,” Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in Guwahati on Thursday.

Mr Sarma said the Australian High Commissioner assured that once AFSPA is lifted from these four districts, Australia will fully remove its travel advisory. Germany is expected to announce a modification soon.

Global Delegation To Visit Assam

The announcement comes ahead of a major diplomatic event in Assam. A delegation of 35 heads of missions will visit the state, led by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. The number is expected to increase to 50.

The Prime Minister’s Office arranged a special aircraft for their travel, with expenses covered by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The delegation will arrive in Kaziranga on February 23, attend the Jhumur performance on February 24, and participate in the inaugural session of Advantage Assam 2.0 in Khanapara on February 25. They will return to New Delhi on the same night.

The delegation includes representatives from Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Rwanda, Sweden, Syria, Sudan, Thailand, and Singapore. Some additional countries are also expected to participate.

PM Modi To Inaugurate Advantage Assam 2.0

Following the Jhumur event at Sarusajai on February 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the exhibition grounds. He is expected to explore two exhibition halls – Pride of Assam, and Future of Assam – before inaugurating Advantage Assam 2.0 on February 25.

Union Ministers Sarbananda Sonowal and Pabitra Margherita, and prominent industrialists will be part of the audience.

Two entrepreneurs from Assam – Abhijit Baruah (Oxygen producer) and Anupam Deka (founder of Repose) will speak in the inaugural function. Other prominent personalities who will be the key speakers of the function are – Anil Kumar Chalamalasetty (CEO, Greenko Group); Prashant Ruia (CEO, Essar Group); Sajjan Jindal (MD, JSW Group); Anil Agarwal (Chairman, Vedanta Group); Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani, and Natarajan Chandrasekaran.

The inaugural function will conclude with the Prime Minister’s address.

Massive Business Interest In Assam’s Growth

Over 18,505 people have registered for Advantage Assam 2.0, with 15,000 approvals. Additionally, 394 participants expressed interest in business-to-government (B2G) sessions, while 452 were keen on business-to-business (B2B) meetings – figures comparable to Gujarat’s investment summits.

On February 23, the Assam Cabinet will review MoU requests to ensure only credible agreements are signed. Along with investment deals, proposals have been received to establish hospitals and universities in Assam. Singapore has already begun investing in Assam’s logistics sector.

A total of 1,512 MoU requests have been received, along with 11,900 expressions of interest from Assam’s MSMEs. The central government is expected to announce new infrastructure projects during the event.

Key Sessions At Advantage Assam 2.0

The event will feature several high-profile sessions, including “i-way to Developed Assam” to be addressed by Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, featuring telecom and foreign industry leaders; “Act East, Act First, Act Fast” – with participation from ambassadors and high commissioners, keynote by S Jaishankar; “semiconductor Industry” to be led by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and hydrocarbon sector to be addressed by Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

There will be sessions on transport, railways, and shipping which will be virtually attended by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and export promotion to be led by Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

There will be a session on Bhutan-India Cooperation featuring Bhutan’s Agriculture Minister and a 12-member Bhutanese delegation.

The valedictory session will be presided over by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, highlighting the proposed semiconductor industry in Jagiroad and the Numaligarh Bamboo Refinery.

Senior officials from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, New Development Bank, and International Finance Corporation are expected to attend. Discussions will also focus on land and financial assistance for investors, with 2,200 attendees, including MSME entrepreneurs and beneficiaries of state and central government schemes.

Showcasing Assam’s Strengths

The summit will feature thematic sessions on aero-defence, aerospace, the aroma industry, and Assam’s economic future. A special session will commemorate 200 years of Assam tea, focusing on strategies to restore its global dominance amid declining quality.

Additional sessions will discuss global platforms for MSMEs and One District, One Product (ODOP), Ayush, fragrance, and flavours industry growth and medical tourism and Assam as a global healthcare destination.

The public exhibition opens on February 27.