Assam Assembly passes bill granting land rights to tea garden workers

Guwahati: The Assam Legislative Meeting handed the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holding (Modification) Invoice, 2025 and with this tea backyard employees residing in labour traces will get land pattas (rights).

This can profit lakhs of tea backyard folks staying in tea gardens for generations. The invoice was handed on Friday.

BJP MLA Rupesh Gowala, tea tribe MLA from Doom Dooma and minister termed the Invoice historic, recalling that employees had lived in firm quarters for many years with out possession rights. “This has all the time been a brief settlement. After retirement, if a employee has no son to exchange him, the household used to lose each shelter and advantages”.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma stated the Invoice seeks to right a historic injustice. “When the British introduced tea employees to Assam, they made them work as slaves. Over time, legal guidelines gave them humanity however not dignity. Right now, that mistake is being rectified.”

Households residing in labour traces will obtain land pattas for the land they occupy. The land can’t be bought for 20 years and thereafter solely to a different tea backyard employee household.

Sarma stated {that a} devoted housing scheme for tea employees will likely be rolled out inside two months following district-level surveys.Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings (Modification) Invoice, 2025 seeks to exclude labour traces (backyard labour colonies) from the definition of “functions ancillary to particular cultivation” in tea estates.This goals to make sure safe land rights for tea backyard employee households by permitting the State to renew labour line land and settle it completely with verified employee households. As a part of the reform every tea backyard employee household residing in labour traces will likely be eligible for settlement. A complete of two,18,553 bighas of land throughout 825 tea estates and three,33,486 tea employee households are anticipated to be benefitted beneath this piece of laws.

Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi raised severe doubts in regards to the “timing, intent and practicality” of the Invoice. He felt the invoice might stay solely on paper.

Gogoi stated. “Tea backyard employees have labored exhausting and demanded land rights for generations. If the federal government was genuinely involved, they might have handed this Invoice when the BJP first got here to energy beneath Sarbananda Sonowal or when Himanta Biswa Sarma grew to become Chief Minister.”