GUWAHATI, April 22: The Gauhati High Court has directed the Assam government to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the All BTC Minority Students’ Union (ABMSU), alleging that the state’s Bengali-speaking community “is being targeted in many ways.”
A bench of Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhury on Tuesday directed the state government to file a counter-affidavit in the matter positively by July 20, 2026.
The PIL claims that the government has introduced certain policies and measures that adversely affect the state’s Bengali-speaking community through the back door.
Hearing the writ petition, the Court termed the allegations to be “very general and vague” while noting that an “over-generalisation” had been made in a PIL challenging specific state policies.
“On a plain reading of the averments made in the writ petition, it appears that the allegations are very general and vague,” the Court observed.
The ABMSU had, in order to substantiate the claims made in the PIL, referred to a special scheme of the state government to grant arms licenses to indigenous people in vulnerable areas. The petitioner alleged that such a move could escalate communal tension.
The petitioner also alleged that eviction drives have been carried out in the state in an arbitrary and inhuman manner without following the due process of law. Besides, it was alleged that, more often than not, the eviction drives target specific minority community groups.
The Court, however, was prima facie unimpressed by the averments made in the petition, noting that “there could be myriad reasons for grant of license to indigenous people in vulnerable areas, which may not necessarily be for the purpose of targeting the minority community.”
