Assam Assembly Elections 2026 | Eviction victims miss polling, many returns disappointed

Guwahati: Ibrahim Ali kept his fingers crossed till the last minute over casting his vote in Assam on Thursday. The 45-year-old trader, a Bengali-speaking Muslim at Kachutoli village, about 50 km from Guwahati, however, had to return disappointed as officials at Sonapur Pathar polling station confirmed that his name was missing from the electoral rolls.

Ali is not alone. More than 2,000 Bengali-speaking Muslim voters at Kachutoli, a village where the BJP-led government in Assam had carried out an eviction drive in 2024, could not cast their votes on Thursday as their names were removed from the electoral rolls.

Nearly 300 of them gathered in front of two polling stations, one at Sonapur Pathar and another at Kachutoli Part-1, with a hope of restoration of their names at the last moment. 

"We were aware that our names have been removed. But we kept our hope about restoration of our names alive till the last moment as we submitted appeals in the district commissioner's office against the same," Ali, told DH over phone on Thursday, soon after the polling for 126-member Assembly ended. 

The state registered a record turnout of polling 85.51 per cent at 8pm.

"This is the first time I could not vote. How can a democratically elected government snatch the right of its citizens?" Ali asked.

"We all are Indian citizens and have documents to prove so. We all have names in the NRC. The government should first verify our citizenship before taking such a drastic and undemocratic step," he said. 

More than 2.43 lakh names were removed from the revised rolls, which was released on February 10 following a special revision by the Election Commission of India in Assam.

Many of these allegedly included victims of the evictions. The EC said an Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was not carried out in Assam, unlike in 12 states, as the NRC exercise (to detect post-1971 migrants) remained incomplete.

Thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims, whom BJP alleges as "Miyas" or "infiltrators" from neighbouring Bangladesh, have been evicted from 1.5 lakh bighas of land (forests, government land and tribal belts and blocks) since 2021 -- when Himanta Biswa Sarma became the Chief Minister.\

Similar eviction drives were carried out in Goalpara, Dhubri, Uriamghat in Golaghat and others.

Most of them have been taking shelter in makeshift huts along the roads. Ali said like them, many evicted victims could not cast their votes in other districts.  

Sarma said many of them have homes in other districts. But Ali claims that most of the victims at Kachutoli lost their homes in erosion in neighbouring Morigaon district and settled there in 1983 and later.

"We bought the land in and around Kachutoli way back in 1983 and later. If these lands were reserved for the tribals, why did the government register those in our names?" he asked.