A district that once made headlines for insurgency is now being held up as a model for mineral-led tribal autonomy. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday, November 2, 2026, announced that transparent limestone block auctions in Dima Hasao will channel roughly ₹1,014 crore every year directly to the Dima Hasao Autonomous Council — no routing through Dispur or Delhi, no bureaucratic waiting.

Thirteen limestone blocks, fifty years of guaranteed revenue

The numbers are striking. According to CM Sarma, 13 limestone blocks were auctioned transparently to top cement companies, locking in a projected ₹84,500 crore over 50 years — roughly ₹1,690 crore annually. The defining feature of the deal: 60 percent of that revenue flows directly to the Dima Hasao Autonomous Council, translating to the ₹1,014 crore per year figure the Chief Minister highlighted. The remaining share is distributed between state and central pools under the standard mineral revenue framework.

Dima Hasao — formerly known as North Cachar Hills — sits in the hill ranges of southern Assam and holds some of the region's richest limestone deposits. For decades, those deposits sat largely untapped as the district wrestled with the armed conflict of the Dima Halam Daogah (DHD), a militant group that signed ceasefire and peace accords with the government through the 2000s. The transition from conflict zone to investment destination is precisely the transformation CM Sarma is citing.

Sixth Schedule autonomy — and what 'real autonomy' means in rupees

The Dima Hasao Autonomous Council is a Sixth Schedule body under the Indian Constitution, meaning it has guaranteed legislative and executive powers over tribal affairs, land management, and local administration. In theory, that autonomy is substantial. In practice, Sixth Schedule councils have historically depended heavily on grants from state and central governments to fund even basic services — making them vulnerable to political cycles and fiscal squeezes in Guwahati or New Delhi.

Sarma's argument is that a direct revenue stream from natural resource auctions breaks that dependency. 'That's real autonomy: no waiting on Dispur or Delhi for every rupee,' he wrote, positioning the mineral proceeds as a structural fiscal backstop — not a one-time grant, but a 50-year annuity built into the auction terms themselves.

Transparent auctions as a post-insurgency development template

The Assam government has in recent years pushed competitive, transparent bidding for mineral blocks across the state as a revenue strategy — replacing older, opaque allocation processes that critics linked to both revenue leakage and local grievance. In tribal hill districts, where the relationship between extractive industry and indigenous communities has historically been contentious, the framing of the auction proceeds as community revenue rather than state revenue is politically significant.

CM Sarma directly took on critics — 'armchair activists,' in his phrasing — who argue that large-scale resource extraction damages indigenous areas. His counter: Dima Hasao itself is the rebuttal. A district that spent a generation fighting an insurgency partly rooted in marginalisation and underdevelopment is now set to receive over a thousand crore rupees a year from the very limestone beneath its hills — on terms the local autonomous council controls.

The rollout of the 60 percent revenue-share mechanism and any environmental and community impact assessments tied to the limestone operations will be the real test of whether the model delivers as promised — but the political statement is already clear and loud.