Land rights for two of Upper Assam's oldest indigenous communities moved closer to resolution on Wednesday, 28 October 2026, when Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma held a focused meeting with organisations representing the Moran and Matak communities in Dibrugarh — and left the table with a concrete three-point action plan.

Three commitments on the table in Dibrugarh

Speaking at the meeting, CM Himanta outlined the steps his government will take under Mission Basundhara 4.0 to address long-standing grievances. First, community-specific guidelines for the Moran and Matak applicants will be published directly on the Basundhara portal — a move designed to remove the ambiguity that has stalled many applications. Second, local youth will be trained to help community members navigate the online application process, bridging the digital divide that has left older or less tech-literate applicants behind. Third, and perhaps most immediately impactful, the deadline for premium payments will be extended for applicants who have been unable to deposit the required amount within the stipulated period.

That payment-deadline extension is a telling detail. It signals that the government has acknowledged a structural problem: families with legitimate land claims are being locked out not because their paperwork is wrong, but because they cannot mobilise cash on the government's timeline. The extension is a procedural fix, but for the households affected, it is a lifeline.

Mission Basundhara's roots — and why Phase 4 matters now

Mission Basundhara was first launched in 2021, the same year CM Himanta took office, with the ambitious goal of digitising land records and issuing formal land titles — pattas — to landless indigenous families across Assam. Each successive phase has broadened the programme's reach, extending similar measures to ethnic groups that had been left out of earlier rounds. The Moran and Matak communities, concentrated in Upper Assam's Dibrugarh and neighbouring districts, have longstanding claims to land they have farmed and inhabited for generations but have often held without formal documentation.

For communities like these, a patta is not just a piece of paper — it is the difference between security and eviction, between a collateral-backed loan and no credit at all. Getting the fourth phase of Basundhara right in Upper Assam is therefore a governance test with very real human stakes.

What comes next for Moran and Matak applicants

The immediate watch-points are the publication of the community-specific guidelines on the Basundhara portal and the roll-out of the youth training programme in Dibrugarh and potentially neighbouring districts. Both are administrative actions that can be tracked and held to account. The government's credibility on this issue will be measured not by the meeting in Dibrugarh, but by how quickly those guidelines appear online and how many trained youth facilitators reach the ground.

For two communities that have waited long for formalisation of their land holdings, the momentum now shifts from the conference room to the portal — and to the clock.