Election Year Begins

With the successful completion of four glorious years in office, Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma’s BJP-led government of Assam on Saturday stepped into its fifth year – which is also its election year. As Sarma has pointed out, the last four years have been a very remarkable period for Assam, with the near-complete restoration of peace, the strengthening of harmonious relations among the numerous ethnic and linguistic groups of the state, and an accelerated pace of development taking the state into a never-before-seen era. While Advantage Assam 0.2 remains the most significant event on the development front, with the state securing investment commitments worth Rs 4.91 lakh crore (nearly five times that of Advantage Assam 0.1 held in 2018), the Rs 27,000-cr nation’s first indigenous semiconductor chips assembly and testing facility at Jagiroad stands out across the country. On the job front, the state government alone has generated close to two lakh jobs, while an equal number of jobs has been created in the private sector in the past four years. As Sarma has put it, once seen as a region beset by numerous challenges, Assam has now emerged as a beacon of opportunity, resilience and innovation for the Northeast in particular and the country as a whole. Communication infrastructure too has received a major boost in the past four years. A number of major bridges were completed, apart from a number of road projects. The state’s tea industry, meanwhile, has completed 200 years despite facing several challenges. On the cultural front, Assam saw two major achievements – World Heritage Site status for the royal Ahom moidams of Charaideo and recognition of Assamese as a Classical Language of India. The crucial environment sector too has received a major boost with the creation of two more national parks – Raimona in June 2021 and Sikhna Jwhwlao in February 2025. Assam now has eight national parks. Unfortunately, loss of forest/green cover continued to remain a major problem. Unofficial reports say Assam lost about 85 sq km of forest cover during 2021-25. Encroachers – both East Pakistan/Bangladeshi migrants and indigenous people – continue to destroy forests and wetlands, a menace which has to be wiped out before the culprits wipe out the forests of Assam.