On August 5, Guwahati faced one of its most severe urban floods in recent history, triggered by a torrential two-hour rainstorm that submerged homes and businesses. The flood brought the largest city in North East India to a standstill, leaving thousands stranded for hours.
The India Meteorological Department reported that Guwahati received between 7 cm and 11 cm of rainfall on August 5.
Amid mounting criticism, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma pointed fingers at the University of Science and Technology Meghalaya, in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya. Sarma accused the institution of causing the flood, labelling it a “flood jihad”.
He claimed that the university’s construction, which involved clearing trees and disrupting hills in the Ri Bhoi district, led to the deluge in Guwahati. Sarma criticised the university’s founder, Mahbubul Hoque, a Muslim from Assam, alleging that such actions were part of a deliberate scheme to inflict harm on Assam.
Fifteen days after the initial flood, when Guwahati experienced more flooding following another heavy rainstorm, Sarma doubled down on his criticism of USTM and claimed that his administration may even bar this university’s graduates from seeking government jobs in Assam.
However, Guwahati residents have questioned the logic behind the CM’s claim and highlighted other factors contributing to the flooding, such as poorly constructed flyovers, defective drainage systems, and inefficient city management.
Mukunda Saikia, a lyricist and research scholar whose home was damaged in the flood, criticised the Chief Minister for focusing on religious politics rather than addressing the crisis. “The chief minister is not taking responsibility. These days, his speech [only] revolves around Hindu-Muslim politics,” Saikia told Scroll.
Patricia Mukhim, an editor from Shillong, said in the Scroll report that Sarma’s accusations were a distraction from his administration’s failure in managing urban infrastructure, including the reclamation of wetlands by developers.
Local residents linked the flooding to recent construction activities. Some blame the flyover built by the Himanta Biswa Sarma administration at a cost of Rs 127 crore. They say that a stream or channel once existed beneath the flyover but it has been blocked by debris and waste. Residents at the base of the flyover, like those in Rukminigaon, face flooding due to runoff from the elevated structure.
Guwahati, which added 18 new flyovers in the past five years under the BJP government, will have two more, including the state’s longest in the near future.
“By targeting a university and its promoter, a Muslim individual, he sought to communalise the issue and shift the blame,” said a statement issued by Minority Watch, a group of North-East based civil society group members from different communities.
The University of Science and Technology Meghalaya (USTM) denied the allegations, stating that its campus contributes only a small fraction of the water flow through local drains. The university, established in 2008, caters to nearly 6,000 students and employs 1,500 staff from across the northeastern states, including Assam.
Before Sarma, another minister, Ashok Singhal, had similarly attributed the urban flooding to water from Meghalaya. However, experts have long pointed out that Guwahati’s flood risks are linked to its geographical features and local environmental changes.
Guwahati, surrounded by 15 hills, faces severe flooding due to sediment and runoff from these hills. A 2016 study by Professor Arup Kumar Sarma from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, highlighted that the city’s undulating terrain and the encroachment on natural drainage channels and wetlands are major contributors to flooding. The IIT professor said that blaming a single university overlooks the broader issues of vegetation loss and inadequate drainage infrastructure.
“If the vegetation in the hills is extinct, the probability of sediment and water coming down from the hills increases significantly,” he explained. “The sediment tends to block drains, and low-lying areas are often flooded.”
