Assam redraws who counts as an ‘original inhabitant’ in heritage land law | India News
2 min readGuwahatiUpdated: Jul 30, 2026 05:11 AM IST Two years after it passed legislative amendments that put tight restrictions on the sale and purchase of land around certain institutions, the Assam Assembly passed a revised Bill Wednesday that redefines the phrase “original inhabitants”. The 2024 law was passed but did not come into force. The government Wednesday introduced a revised set of amendments to the Assam Land Revenue and Regulation Act. In 2024, the previous Assam Legislative Assembly had passed the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2024, restricting the sale and purchase of land within a 5-kilometre radius of “iconic heritage structures” over 250 years old to “original inhabitants”, which it defined as people who have been living, along with their families, in that area “for three generations prior to the date of commencement of the Act”. The revised Bill passed by the Assembly Wednesday has tweaked the definition of an original inhabitant as a person “who has been living in that area along with his family for [the] last three generations …









