Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma interacts with the press at Koinadhara Guesthouse in Guwahati on the primary day of 2026 | Photograph courtesy of ANI
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday (January 1, 2026) threatened to withdraw all incentives given to tea backyard house owners in the event that they oppose the transfer to grant land rights to staff.
In November 2025, the state authorities launched a invoice that might make tea plantation staff the house owners of the land they occupy within the “labor line” of tea plantations. A labor line is a row of residences for plantation staff in a specific part of a tea plantation.
The Assam Land Tenure Ceiling Fixation (Modification) Act goals to take away labor traces from the “auxiliary land” class for tea estates. The federal government claimed that this might guarantee “land safety” for 3.33 lakh tea staff in 825 tea estates within the state.
“Tea staff who’ve been residing in Assam for 200 years have the precise to land,” the Chief Minister mentioned.
“The response of tea plantation house owners (to the land distribution) isn’t very constructive. We’ll withdraw incentives for plantation house owners who don’t cooperate with the federal government on this regard,” he mentioned.
Sarma mentioned the federal government gives numerous incentives value Rs 150 million yearly to tea gardens.
British tea gardeners introduced Adivasis from central India to work within the tea gardens within the 1800s. The employees belonging to Santal, Kol, Bir, Munda and a minimum of 90 different communities are often called ‘Tea tribes’ in Assam.
The ‘Tea Tribes’ and ‘Ex-Tea Tribes’ (generations now not related to tea estates), that are among the many six communities demanding Scheduled Tribe standing, represent about 18% of Assam’s voters. They’re mentioned to have been drawn from the Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Celebration over the previous decade.
Many tea planters in Assam are sad with the federal government’s determination to “twist their arms” to make them half with their plantations. They declare that the state authorities acquired massive tracts of land from tea estates beneath the Assam Land Tenure Ceiling Act, 1956 and allowed these estates to carry land just for particular cultivation of tea and ancillary functions (factories, housing, hospitals, and so on.).
“…the land at the moment accessible for tea estates is the land left over after the give up of surplus land. Additional acquisitions would due to this fact have a damaging impression on the long-term viability of the tea trade…” the Consultative Committee of Farmers Associations (CCPA) mentioned in response to the federal government’s transfer.
The CCPA, which covers tea, espresso, rubber and cardamom planters, identified that the Assam Plantation Labor Guidelines exclude the designation of backyard land to be allotted as ‘pattas’. It additionally mentioned that employee quarters and line areas are a part of the statutory amenities mandated beneath the Plantation Labor Act, 1951 and can’t be transformed into transferable land possession.
