Flood-battered students in four Assam districts no longer have to navigate police stations to replace lost academic records. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on Wednesday, 29 July 2026 that the state has issued a formal notification enabling free duplicate admit cards, marksheets, and other academic documents for students affected by the monsoon floods — with no FIR required.

A self-declaration replaces the police report

The change strips out one of the most friction-heavy steps in document replacement. Under the new process, a simple self-declaration by the student or family is sufficient to claim duplicate records — no police report, no FIR, no additional bureaucratic hurdle. CM Sarma had signalled the move the previous day and confirmed the notification's issuance on Wednesday, tagging Education Minister Ranoj Pegu, who oversees school education and the administrative machinery that will implement the order.

Brahmaputra floods, annual crisis, recurring document loss

Assam's Brahmaputra valley floods with near-clockwork regularity every monsoon season, inundating homes, schools, and entire villages. Among the quieter casualties of each flood cycle are students' academic records — board marksheets, admit cards, certificates — lost to rising water or damaged beyond use. The state has historically responded with targeted relief to reduce the burden on students, and this notification continues that pattern, extending free duplicate issuance specifically to the four districts most severely affected in the current flood cycle.

The process now sits entirely within the student's hands: declare the loss, apply, receive the replacement — at no cost. For families already displaced or financially strained by the floods, the removal of the police-report requirement is a meaningful reduction in both time and stress.

What happens next in the four districts

The immediate watch point is rollout — how quickly district education offices operationalise the notification and whether the process reaches students in the most remote, flood-cut areas. Any subsequent government order extending the facility to additional districts, or broadening the categories of documents covered, will signal how far the state intends to push the relief measure this season.

For tens of thousands of students whose academic futures hinge on paperwork now buried under floodwater, the notification is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is the difference between sitting an exam and missing a year.