The recent measures taken by the present Assam government headed by Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma to free government land, particularly reserved forests, from the grip of encroachers have evoked mixed reactions. On one side, the Assamese, Bodo, and other indigenous communities are happy that land belonging to the government is being made free of encroachers, the majority of whom belong to the immigrant category, having their roots in erstwhile East Bengal/Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. Volumes have been written about this menace of land encroachment in Assam, which had started soon after the British government had partitioned Bengal in 1905 in order to weaken the national movement and merged the Assam province with the newly created Eastern Bengal. Mention must also be made that it was in 1906 that the Muslim League was formed in Dhaka, a notorious organisation that has from day one made it a point to target Assam, more particularly its fertile land. The Assamese intelligentsia as well as the then Assam Congress leaders had immediately identified the large-scale migration of Muslim peasants as a dangerous development that would in a few decades change the demography of the state. But, while the Assam Congress under Gopinath Bardoloi and his two worthy successor chief ministers, Bishnuram Medhi and Bimala Prasad Chaliha, had worked relentlessly to free Assam from the increasing menace of Muslim immigration, the same Congress party and its government in the post-Chaliha era became great patrons of these immigrants. Without elaboration, one can say that Assam would have become part of East Pakistan in 1947 if Gopinath Bardoloi and his Assam Congress team had not fought tooth and nail against the Muslim League conspiracy to snatch away Assam. In this context, it is interesting to note that the Committee for Protection of Land Rights of Indigenous People of Assam, constituted by the first BJP-led government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal, in its final report dated December 30, 2017, had clearly held successive Assam governments as well as a section of Assamese people responsible for large-scale encroachment of land by the immigrants. The Committee’s report had mentioned “the mysterious conduct of both the Government and the people tolerating, encouraging, and facilitating, either directly or indirectly, this suicidal infiltration and encroachment on land.” The said report had also held the Government of Assam accountable for working in tandem with the Government of India for encouraging and facilitating the protection and shelter of the millions of illegal Bangladeshis by enacting the notorious IM(DT) Act, 1983, for the lure of illegal vote banks. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down the IM(DT) Act on July 12, 2005, by calling it ultra vires to the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court in its order had also described infiltration as a “silent invasion” of India’s Northeastern region and had directed the Government of India to protect its land and people from this aggression. As the Committee had said, viewed from the national perspective, this is a perilous situation, which must be brought to the sharp attention of one and all and put to an end if Assam and the indigenous people of Assam have to survive the unassailable onslaught from across the Bangladesh borders. It is in this backdrop that recovering every inch of land from the grip of illegal migrants and people of doubtful citizenship status is very important and justified.