A year after mass evictions, CM Sarma launches Adani's Assam power project on the same site

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday, September 20, laid the foundation stone for a 3,200 MW thermal power project by Adani Power Limited in Dhubri district, on land where the homes of around 1,400 Bengali-origin Muslim families were demolished during an eviction drive in July 2025, according to a report by Scroll.in's Rokibuz Zaman.

The project is coming up across Charuabakhra, Chirakuta I and II, and Santoshpur villages under the Chapar revenue circle, on nearly 1,157 acres of government land, Scroll.in reported. Reports citing local documentation state that the district administration submitted a proposal on March 30, 2025, to convert village grazing land, a category of government land designated for cattle grazing, for the power project, a move recorded in the minutes of a district-level land advisory meeting held on April 2, 2025. Eviction notices were subsequently issued on April 4, 2025. Adani Group scion Jeet Adani visited the site on April 22, 2025, and within roughly two months, around 1,400 families were evicted and more than 10,000 people were left homeless.

Bulldozers moved into the villages starting July 8, 2025, in what the human rights organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), co-founded by activist Teesta Setalvad, described in its report "Bulldozing the Poor: Assam's eviction drives for Adani project leave thousands homeless" as one of the state's most aggressive eviction drives in recent memory. Residents told Scroll.in that many of those displaced were people who had already lost their ancestral homes to erosion caused by the Brahmaputra river before settling in the area over the preceding three to four decades.

The land was first allotted to the state-run Assam Power Distribution Company Limited, which subsequently allotted it to Adani Power for the project, according to Scroll.in. In its application seeking environmental clearance, Adani Power told the Union Environment Ministry that there were no habitations at the project site and that, as a result, no rehabilitation or resettlement claims were involved, a claim residents have strongly disputed, Scroll.in reported. Resident Abdur Rashid Sheikh told Scroll.in that the site had already been cleared through what he called "forceful eviction drives," leaving around 1,400 families without homes or any rehabilitation and resettlement support. He said that apart from 3,500 bighas of government land taken forcibly, another 1,700 bighas belonging to people who held land titles were also taken, with about half of these landowners left without compensation.

On July 14, 2025, an Expert Appraisal Committee under the Union Environment Ministry recommended environmental clearance for the coal-based thermal plant, per Scroll.in.

Speaking at the foundation-laying ceremony, Sarma described the project as Assam's "biggest-ever power project" on X, saying the ₹48,000 crore initiative was a direct outcome of the Advantage Assam 2.0 investment summit held 18 months earlier, and that it would generate enough electricity to meet the state's entire power needs. He noted that while national power demand had been rising at around 6 per cent annually, Assam's demand was growing faster, at roughly 9 per cent a year. The Adani Group has said the project is expected to generate up to 20,000 jobs during construction and around 5,000 once operational, according to a company statement cited by Scroll.in. Sarma had earlier said the group had committed investments worth Rs 50,000 crore in the state following a February business summit.

The Dhubri project is one of several major eviction drives Sarma's government has carried out since 2021, during which officials say around 260 square kilometres of land have been cleared of what the government calls "encroachers," predominantly targeting Bengali-origin Muslim settlements on forest, wetland and grazing land across districts including Dhubri, Goalpara, Darrang, Kamrup Metro and Lakhimpur, according to Deccan Herald. Some of these drives have turned violent, with at least five Bengali-speaking Muslims killed in police firing during earlier evictions, Deccan Herald reported. Opposition parties, including the Congress, have accused the BJP government of using eviction drives as a "polarisation tactic" ahead of state elections, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi previously alleging that Sarma was "snatching" land from the poor to hand it to corporate groups including Adani, Ambani and Ramdev. The state government has defended the drives as necessary to protect land from illegal encroachment and reclaim it for indigenous communities and public infrastructure.