Mumbai: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday (March 12, 2026) that he wants to create “pressure” so that Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state “leave by themselves”, suggesting measures such as evictions, “depriving” them of government benefits and firing rubber bullets at Bangladeshi migrants.Sarma, while speaking at the ‘Panchayat Assam’ event organised by Aaj Tak channel on March 12, said he wanted to create “pressure” so that the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims “leave by themselves”. In January this year, Sarma had asked Assamese people to ‘trouble’ Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state by filing complaints against them.Doubling down on it, Sarma said deporting what he described as millions of undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh would be difficult and that authorities instead needed to create conditions that would encourage them to depart voluntarily.“I won’t be able to deport them in my lifetime. That’s why I keep pressuring them… so that they leave by themselves,” he said. “You have to create a mahaul like, we don’t want you (sic). I don’t like you. If you create an atmosphere at home that I am unwanted, then people often walk out,” he reasoned.In his conversation, Sarma outlined his plans to “deprive” the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims of their benefits, and take over the lands they occupied, as part of his plan to create such pressure.“You have to deprive them from those advantages,” he said, referring to the government benefits the community gets. “Then, they have to be evicted from the lands they have occupied illegally,” he said, adding that the government had already evicted Muslim migrants from across 50,000 acres of land. “When this mahaul is created, they will leave on their own. Bangladesh is just a next door neighbour,” he said.Sarma said Union home minister Amit Shah had told him to “evict” migrants in 24 hours. The Assam government has already deported tens of thousands of suspected foreigners to Bangladesh as a part of its controversial “pushback” policy, which has routinely seen armed police or paramilitary officials push people into Bangladesh, often at gunpoint. This has also led to many Indian Muslims being pushed into Bangladesh. Human Rights Watch has called these expulsions to be “unlawful and discriminatory”.Sarma also said that the demography of 12 districts in Assam had “changed so much that you cannot even enter there”. “If you want to go there for tourism you can go, but it is a different world there. All these people have come from Bangladesh. So, Bangladeshi and Indian cultures mix to become a cocktail,” he said. In December last year, Sarma, without offering evidence, had said Assam was facing a “demographic invasion” and warned that non-Muslims “won’t survive” if the Muslim population crosses 50% of the state’s population.Sarma’s latest statement comes weeks after the Gauhati high court served him a notice while hearing a clutch of public interest litigations against his repeated remarks targeting the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims, often referred to as ‘Miya’ Muslims.Sarma also defended a widely-criticised video that the official X account for the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had posted. The artificial intelligence-generated video titled ‘point blank shot’ showed Sarma shooting at two Muslim men. The video was deleted soon after, possibly due to the criticism it garnered.However, the Assam chief minister said the video was “okay” if it showed him shooting Bangladeshi Muslims. “The video maker was okay, he should have added one word. They should have added Bangladeshi to it. The rest is okay,” he said. When Kashyap asked him how it was okay for a chief minister to be shooting Bangladeshis, Sarma said they were “symbolic bullets”.“I don’t mean physical bullets. It can be a rubber bullet too. So that Bangladeshis don’t come to Assam border, the Assam CM will have to fire bullets symbolically. Should we open it up?”He said he would be reposting the video soon. “Since we had not added the word Bangladeshi to it, it was constitutionally and legally wrong. But we will correct it and upload it. And I will upload it personally, from my handle, not the BJP handle,” he said.A history of hateHis latest remarks are seen to be a reiteration of his controversial remarks in January this year when he asked people in the state to “trouble” ‘Miyas’.“Whoever can give trouble in any way should give, including you. In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4. Only if they face troubles will they leave Assam… These are not issues. Himanta Biswa Sarma and the BJP are directly against Miyas. What is the point of telling us that these are issues? We are saying it openly; we are not hiding it. Earlier, people were scared; now I myself am encouraging people to keep giving troubles,” he had said, on January 27 while speaking to reporters in Digboi town of Tinsukia district.His remarks come weeks after the Gauhati high court issued a notice to him, hearing a petition filed against his hate speeches targeting the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims.The PIL said he was ‘instigating social and economic boycotts, propagating harmful stereotypes and encouraging civilians to take law and order into their own hands’ through his speeches, where he encouraged citizens to file complaints against members of the community.Over the last few years, Sarma has regularly delivered controversial speeches targeting Muslims across the country – from referring to “Baburs” settled across India, often employed as short-hand for Muslims, to alleging a ‘fertiliser jihad’ was draining fertile soil of its nutrients, and making repeated remarks regarding ‘land jihad’ and ‘love jihad’, unproven conspiracy theories claiming Muslims were conspiring to take over Hindu-owned land and Hindu women.Reports by an anti-hate speech watchdog, the Washington DC-based India Hate Lab, a project of the Center for the Study of Organised Hate, said Sarma made 16 hate speeches in 2025 and 36 in 2024, targeting Muslims as well as the Rohingya and Bangladeshis.In February this year, hearing three petitions filed against Sarma’s frequent hate speeches, the Supreme Court Chief Justice of India Surya Kant had called the petitions a part of a “calculated effort” to “demoralise the high courts” and asked the petitioners to instead approach the Gauhati high court. The CJI appeared to claim that the case was brought to the court with an eye on the upcoming Assam polls.“Wherever the elections come, this court becomes a political battleground,” he was quoted saying.The Gauhati high court, meanwhile, has scheduled the matter for hearing on April 21.