Photo Courtesy: nenow
Guwahati: Former Assam legislative opposition leader Debabrata Saikia claims rampant illegal sand and stone mining destroyed the Dikhow River. The river, once known as the Vashistha Ganga, relied on rocks as natural flow brakes. Mining stripped these barriers away. The riverbed is now shallow and dangerously wide.
Saikia released satellite imagery comparing riverbanks from 2010 to 2024. The green banks are gone. They are now massive pits and ruins. He blames this ecological collapse for the monsoon flooding in Nazira and Sivasagar.
A 2019 public interest litigation, PIL No. 62/2019, warned of these exact consequences. The Gauhati High Court ordered the state to build a Mines and Minerals Task Force Battalion in October 2019. The government ignored the mandate. It later claimed existing forest department tools were enough to stop the rot.
Technical warnings went ignored. An Assistant Executive Engineer from the Nazira Water Resources Sub-Division inspected the site near Bamunpukhuri Tea Estate on January 12, 2022. That report flagged the exact risks Saikia highlighted. He pressed the issue in the Assam Assembly in March 2022 and wrote to the Environment and Forest Minister in June 2024.
Saikia sees a clear pattern of corruption. He stated, "The disaster that the people of Nazira are facing today is not an act of nature; it is a man-made disaster caused by the collusion between the government and the mafia."
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