Owners of tea gardens in Assam have been threatened by the government with losing their incentives if they refuse to provide their employees land rights.
The state government introduced the "Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holding (Amendment) Bill, 2025" at the Assembly's winter session in November 2025 in order to distribute land in tea estates labor lines among the workers for dwelling ownership. The governor has given his consent to the law.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said to reporters on Thursday, "We have seen non-cooperation from some tea estate owners."
"If the owners do not cooperate, we will remove incentives totaling Rs 150 crore. Tea workers were forced to work as slaves when the British brought them to Assam. Laws eventually granted them humanity, but not dignity. That error is being fixed today," he continued.
According to the law, labor-line tea garden workers will be granted land rights (pattas) for the land they inhabit. After 20 years, the land can only be sold to another family that works in a tea garden.
The tea garden worker population is a significant voting bank that transferred loyalty to the BJP in the 2016 Assam elections, so this action is considered as having enormous political potential ahead of the Assam elections, which are scheduled to take place in three months.
This legislation is anticipated to help 3,33,486 tea worker families and 2,18,553 bigha (a measure of land area) of land spread among 825 tea farms.
In light of this, the Consultative Committee of Planters Associations (CCPA) has established guidelines for allocating tea estate land to plantation laborers. It has been noted that no garden land may be designated or allocated as "patta" under the Assam Plantation Labour Rules.
Additionally, the CCPA stated that labor quarters and line areas cannot be transformed into transferable property ownership as suggested by the government since they are statutory amenities required by the Plantation Labour Act, 1951.
According to the planters body, the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1956, allowed the state government to acquire sizable portions of the tea gardens, allowing these estates to keep land solely for special tea cultivation and ancillary uses (factories, homes, hospitals, etc.).
