Land patta on Brahmaputra

Assam Revenue Minister Jogen Mohon made a very significant statement on Friday in the State Legislative Assembly regarding settlement of land in the char (sandbar) areas of the Brahmaputra river. According to the minister, henceforth no land settlement (patta) would be issued for land on char areas except in Majuli Island. He has clearly informed the Assembly that there are two types of sandbars in the Brahmaputra and other rivers of the state. One type is permanent land, as in the case of Majuli. The other type is purely temporary; it is formed by the Brahmaputra in one particular year and then washed away another year. This statement coming from the minister is very significant in various aspects. One, granting settlement in such sandbars creates serious obstructions to the free flow of the Brahmaputra. This in turn causes the river to hit the banks and cause erosion of permanent land. The second issue is that the majority, if not all, of the people seeking land settlement in the heart of the Brahmaputra are of migrant origin, including fresh infiltrators from the neighbouring country. Granting them land patta means legitimising their claims to Indian citizenship. Thirdly, it has been seen in the past that such people, upon getting land pattas (given by previous Congress regimes), later shift to the mainland after their land gets eroded and demand fresh khas land from the government. Many times, such unscrupulous land-hungry people have been settled, particularly by different Congress regimes, in valuable forests or in PGRs and VGRs that are meant for the use of the indigenous communities. Additionally, the lawful and unlawful settlements in the middle of the Brahmaputra are dens of all kinds of criminals and antisocial elements, many of whom are jehadis working against the sovereignty and integrity of India. Protecting the Brahmaputra itself is a serious ecological issue.