Adani’s Assam Endgame: Land, Power and the Price of a State

Adani’s Assam Endgame: Land, Power and the Price of a State

ARABINDA RABHA

In less than a year, the Adani Group has quietly stitched together one of the most audacious corporate land-and-power plays in modern Indian history: a ₹63,000 crore ($7.2 billion) energy corridor across Assam that will hand a single Gujarat-based conglomerate control over thousands of acres of protected tribal forest, the state’s future electricity bills, and a sprawling aerotropolis around its only international airport.

What the Assam government and Adani Power trumpet as the “largest private investment in the northeast” has detonated a multi-front rebellion. Indigenous Bodo, Karbi and Dimasa communities are blockading forest roads. Power-sector employees have shut down Guwahati’s electricity headquarters. And villagers around Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport are staring at eviction notices for an Adani-backed “future city” that few of them asked for.

This is no longer a series of isolated protests. It is a state-wide reckoning with a single question: how much of Assam is for sale?

The Forest That Wasn’t Supposed to Be Sold

At the epicenter sits Paglijhora Protected Reserve Forest in Kokrajhar district, a Sixth Schedule area under the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). In April 2025, the BTC allotted 3,400 bighas (≈1,137 acres) of pristine sal and teak forest free of cost and in perpetuity to the Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd (APDCL) – widely understood as a front for Adani Power’s planned 3,200 MW ultra-supercritical coal plant.

No Gram Sabha consent. No wildlife clearance. No environmental impact assessment. No public hearing.

The Boro Diaspora Forum, led by retired Indian Audit & Accounts Service officer Pinuel Basumatary, called it “a grave encroachment on the constitutional autonomy of the Sixth Schedule” and “permanent alienation of tribal land”. Villagers in the six affected hamlets of Banshbari-Paglijhora have been holding continuous dharnas since May, repeatedly chasing away survey teams and blocking the Gauripur-Banshbari highway.

The forum (BDR) in its memorandum ( The memorandum was signed by BDF President Pinuel Basumatary, along with Advisors Benudhar Basumatary, Prof Janak Jhankar Narzary, and K Mochahary, IAS -Retd..) dated June 16,2025 highlighted that as per BTC letter No. BTC/LR-803/2025/18 dated 19 April 2025, around 3,000 bighas (991 acres) of Khas land under Bagribari Revenue Circle in Kokrajhar district has been allotted to Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL) for setting up a power plant project, reportedly to be developed by Adani Power, a private multinational conglomerate. The non-political organization asserted that the allotment violates the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which grants legislative and administrative control over land and natural resources to the autonomous council. The forum noted that the decision infringes upon the BTC’s constitutional jurisdiction.

“The land grant by the state government amounts to constitutional overreach and sets a dangerous precedent,” the forum stated, further questioning the lack of conditions attached to the allotment. The land has been reportedly granted in perpetuity, free of cost, and without a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) involving the council government or consultation with local stakeholders. The forum warned that such a move alienates indigenous communities from their land and resources, and renders their constitutional rights meaningless.

“Raising environmental concerns, the forum pointed out that the proposed site lies within a 10-km radius of reserved forests, yet no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or clearance from the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) was sought. It warned of serious ecological consequences from the coal-based thermal plant, including increased CO? levels, harmful emissions, and fly-ash contamination that threatens groundwater.” ( The Sntinel, 19th June, 2025)

Umrangshu: Resistance Bought Off, Ecology Sold Out

A similar script played out in Dima Hasao’s Umrangshu region, where a year-long agitation against the alleged transfer of nearly 9,000 bighas for limestone mining and an Ambuja Cement (Adani-owned) plant collapsed in early November after compensation cheques were distributed. Former North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council member Daniel Langthasa described the subsequent public hearing as “a mere show”, pointing out that money changed hands before the Assam Pollution Control Board even granted clearance.

“The air will become heavy, the water unsafe,” he warned. Few disagree, yet the bulldozers are already moving in.

Guwahati Airport: From Runway to Real-Estate Empire

Since taking over Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport on a 50-year lease in 2021, the Adani Group has moved far beyond aviation. In July 2025, the Kamrup (Metro) administration issued notices for over 400 bighas across Garal, Mirzapur and Azara villages to make way for an “Aerotropolis” – a private township of malls, hotels and logistics parks. Once again, the state invoked the colonial-era Assam Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Act of 1964 to bypass landowner consent.

Environmentalists warn the expansion will choke Deepor Beel, a Ramsar-listed wetland and one of the last refuges for migratory birds in the Brahmaputra valley.

₹6.30 per Unit: The Most Expensive Power in India

The financial sting comes in the form of a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) that APDCL is being forced to sign with Adani Power. The agreed tariff: ₹6.30 per unit – higher than Uttar Pradesh (₹5.39), Maharashtra (₹5.39), Madhya Pradesh (₹5.81) and even Bihar (₹6.075).

On 21 November, hundreds of APDCL employees and pensioners brought Bijulee Bhawan to a standstill. “We already have 2,200 MW of long-term contracts,” said Pranjal Baruah of the Power Employees and Pensioners Coordination Committee. “Adding another 3,200 MW without load forecasting will create surplus power we cannot sell, and the extra cost will be passed on to consumers.”

Independent analysts project domestic tariffs in Assam could rise 20-30 per cent within five years.

Bangladesh’s review of Hasina-era pacts and Adani

Adani Power’s 1,600-megawatt Godda coal-fired plant in Jharkhand, commissioned in 2023 to exclusively supply Bangladesh under a controversial 25-year agreement signed in 2017, now faces potential rejection amid escalating disputes with Dhaka’s interim government, which has accused the deal of corruption, inflated tariffs (at 14.87 taka per unit, 55% above average Indian imports), and irregularities tied to tax exemptions and coal pricing; a November 2025 High Court halt on arbitration proceedings over $850 million in unpaid dues, coupled with threats of cancellation if probes confirm bribery or one-sided provisions, has slashed supplies by half and prompted India to allow domestic sales as a bailout, leaving Adani scrambling for alternative markets. This instability, exacerbated by Bangladesh’s review of Hasina-era pacts and Adani’s $437 million dues clearance in June 2025 failing to resolve core pricing rifts, has evidently redirected the conglomerate’s aggressive expansion gaze toward Assam, where its ₹63,000 crore ($7.2 billion) thermal and pumped-storage projects-demanding 3,400 bighas of tribal forest land in Kokrajhar-secure new off-take guarantees via a 25-year PPA at ₹6.30 per unit, India’s highest rate, amid fierce local protests over sovereignty erosion in the resource-rich northeast.

The Political Backdrop No One Mentions Out Loud

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, once a fierce critic of “Gujarati takeover” while in the Congress, now openly courts Gautam Adani. Opposition leaders point to a 2 November 2025 meeting between Sarma and Adani in Guwahati as the moment the final hurdles were removed.

Congress state chief Gaurav Gogoi calls it “handing over tribal heartlands on a platter”. Raijor Dal’s Akhil Gogoi goes further: “This is not development; this is colonisation by contract.”

A Familiar Playbook

Assam is only the latest chapter. In Bihar, Adani was granted 1,000 acres for a thermal plant at ₹1 per acre per year. In Kenya, airport deals collapsed amid bribery scandals. In Australia, the Carmichael coal mine became a global symbol of climate vandalism.

Yet in India, investigations fizzle, regulators look away, and projects march on.

The Storm That Hasn’t Broken – Yet

For now, the protests remain scattered: a highway blockade in Kokrajhar, a shuttered office in Guwahati, a silent wetland on the city’s edge. But the threads are rapidly converging. Tribal bodies, students’ unions, power-sector workers and environmentalists are beginning to talk to one another.

If they unite, Assam could become the place where the Adani model finally meets a wall it cannot buy, bulldoze or bribe its way through.

As one banner in Paglijhora reads: “We did not fight the Indian state for Bodoland autonomy only to hand our forests to a corporation from Gujarat.”

The monsoons have receded. The next flood may not be of water, but of people.

25-11-2025

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