NEW DELHI, Feb 11: Complaints filed by the BJP workers led to the deletion of names of many “doubtful voters” during the recent Special Revision of Assam’s electoral rolls, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday.
More than 2.43 lakh voters’ names appearing in the draft rolls published on December 27, 2025, were deleted from the final voters’ list released by the Election Commission of India on Tuesday. A total of 2.49 crore voters figure in the final list, a 0.97% decrease from the draft list.
The Chief Minister said BJP workers went to the extent possible to file complaints against voters of doubtful nationality and convince booth-level officers that they were not eligible to vote. “Names of more such people will be deleted when the Special Intensive Revision is conducted,” he told journalists in Guwahati.
He claimed that such large-scale deletion was done for the first time since the Assam Accord was signed in August 1985, signaling the end of a six-year agitation to eject so-called “illegal immigrants” or “Bangladeshis” from the State. The alleged inclusion of suspected foreigners during a Lok Sabha by-election had triggered the agitation in 1979.
Mr Sarma asserted that the drive against illegal immigrants will continue. He had earlier said, during the Special Revision, that notices were only served on ‘Miya’ people to “keep them under pressure.” ‘Miya’ is a pejorative used for Bengali-speaking or Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam.
Referring to the Supreme Court’s encroachment-related order on Tuesday, the Chief Minister said more than 26 lakh bighas (8,58,000 acres) of land in Assam are yet to be freed from encroachment. The government has cleared 1,25,326 bighas (41,358 acres) of encroached forest land so far.
He said the total area requiring eviction would be about 20 lakh bighas (6,60,000 acres), after the land rights of eligible indigenous people are regularised. “The Assam government has the right to grant land rights to indigenous people, even in a forest area. We will expedite forest pattas (land deeds) for them,” he said.
Mr Sarma said the Supreme Court had streamlined the eviction process by letting the State government form a committee comprising Forest and Revenue officials to identify unauthorized occupants in the Doyang Reserved Forest and adjoining villages in Golaghat district, bordering Nagaland. The top court also laid down safeguards to ensure due process before any eviction drive.
“The said committee shall issue notice to the alleged unauthorized occupants and shall allow them to adduce evidence to show that they have the right to occupy the land which is in their possession. The action for removal of encroachment shall be taken only if it is found that there is an encroachment in the reserved forest area,” the court said, suggesting a 15-day notice period for the unauthorized occupants of forest land.
The Chief Minister said the report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi’s alleged Pakistan links would be revised to incorporate his “disclosures” made at a press conference on Monday.
He said that the amended report would have two additional inputs — Mr Gogoi’s acknowledgment of a visit to Rawalpindi district, and his statement that his wife, Elizabeth Colburn Gogoi, had received a salary “directly from Pakistan.”
Mr Sarma said the Congress leader visited Rawalpindi, which has the Pakistan Army headquarters, without mentioning it in the visa before crossing over at the Attari-Wagah border. He said the revised report would be sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs within a couple of days. The SIT was constituted to investigate alleged interference in India’s internal affairs by Pakistani national Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, who was claimed to have links to Mr Gogoi’s British wife.
(Rohit Kumar)
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