The Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha has demanded a high-level government inquiry into the allocation of land at Inle Pathar and Hatikhuli, on the fringe of Kaziranga National Park, saying it was reclassified and handed to a hospitality company without consulting the tea-tribe families who have farmed it for generations.

Raju Sahu, the union's Panitola branch secretary and a former MLA, questioned how the land could be reclassified and allotted without an assessment of the project's effect on the ecologically sensitive Kaziranga landscape, The Assam Tribune reported. He called for immediate intervention and a full inquiry into the allotment process, and urged the government to grant land pattas to the affected tea-tribe families instead, so their claim to the land they occupy is put beyond doubt.

Geeta Gowala, from the nearby Rangajan Tea Estate, was named by the union for raising the alarm over the allocation. The union did not identify the hospitality company involved.

The fringe of Kaziranga has been contested ground for years. Tata-owned Hatikhuli Tea Estate, an organic garden bordering the park's core area in Golaghat district, has been the site of a long-running dispute since a plan surfaced to build a hotel on roughly eight hectares of it; a separate 2023 memorandum of understanding for a hotel at Inglay Pathar, also on the park's fringe, drew its own protests from Adivasi families who cultivate the land. The National Green Tribunal took up the broader land-transfer question on its own initiative in 2024, and the case remains before the courts.

Sources: The Assam Tribune, "Tea workers' body flags Kaziranga fringe land allocation, seeks govt inquiry"; Prag News, "Assam Tea Workers' Union Demands High-Level Probe into Alleged Kaziranga Fringe Land Allocation"; Down To Earth, "NGT takes suo motu cognisance as Assam seeks to hand over Kaziranga land to Tata group's luxury hotel".