"Give Land Rights To Workers Or...": Assam Government Warns Tea Estates

The Assam government has threatened tea garden owners with the withdrawal of incentives if they oppose granting land rights to their workers.

In November 2025, during the winter session of the Assembly, the state government brought a legislation, 'Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holding (Amendment) Bill, 2025, to distribute land in tea estates' labour lines among the workers for housing ownership. The bill has received assent from the Governor.

"We have seen non-cooperation from some tea estate owners," Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters on Thursday. "We will withdraw incentives to the tune of Rs 150 crore if there is no cooperation from the owners. When the British brought tea workers to Assam, they made them work as slaves. Over time, laws gave them humanity but not dignity. Today, that mistake is being rectified," he added.

The law says that tea garden workers living in labour lines will receive land rights (pattas) for the land they occupy. The land cannot be sold for 20 years and, thereafter, only to another tea garden worker family.

Ahead of the Assam polls, due to take place in the next three months, this move is seen as one that could yield huge political dividends, as the tea garden worker community is a major vote bank that shifted loyalty towards the BJP in the 2016 Assam elections.

A total of 2,18,553 bigha (a measure of land area) of land across 825 tea estates and 3,33,486 tea worker families are expected to benefit under this piece of legislation.

Amid this, the Consultative Committee of Planters' Associations (CCPA) has set certain conditions for the distribution of tea estate land among plantation workers. It has been observed that the Assam Plantation Labour Rules do not allow any garden land to be earmarked or distributed as 'patta'.

The CCPA also said that labour quarters and line areas are part of the statutory facilities mandated under the Plantation Labour Act, 1951, and cannot be converted into transferable land ownership, as proposed by the government.

The planters' body believes that the state government had acquired large areas from the tea gardens under the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1956, and allowed these estates to retain land only for special cultivation of tea and ancillary purposes (factory, houses, hospitals, among others), nothing beyond.