The resistance to this acquisition of land came from the workers (around 1900) employed in the tea garden who will be adversely affected by the removal of the plants. The agitation began in January 2022 when Assam Tea Tribe Students’ Association (ATTSA) held a protest meeting near the TE [6]. Thereafter, on April 2022, the officials who arrived to conduct surveys for land demarcation were gheraoed by more than 1000 workers [7]. Asom Majuri Shramik Union (AMSU) spearheaded the movement and forced the administration to conduct public hearings, where they rejected clearing of the existing plantation [8]. The administration deployed armed personnel and conducted flag march for multiple days and eventually forced its way through, while the workers continued protesting [9, 10]. Various tactics were used to thwart the movement, like threats, detention, restriction on movement, questioning the credibility of AMSU and categorization of the protestors as Maoists [5, 11, 12,13, 14]. The protests continue till date, and have taken various forms – protest march, sit-ins, legal battle, plantation ritual, twitter storms, etc. [14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. Support for the resistance has been given by workers from other tea gardens, various sections of the civil society and organizations across the nation. The arguments raised by the workers are based on the historical experience of displacement and dispossession faced by the tea garden workers when the Silchar Medical College and Hospital, Assam University and National Institute of Technology were constructed in various places near Silchar [19]. According to AMSU and the workers, the MoU signed was done without consulting the workers and it was made public only after pressing demands were made by the workers, which was rejected in the public hearings by the people because it mentions clearing of Employee Provident Fund and Gratuity, which are their rightful money and not compensation [5]. The provisions in the MoU about not laying off the workers and employing them in newer plantations have been questioned about its possibility and lack of clarity, and also the exclusion of casual/temporary workers who will be equally impacted [4].

 Saying, “If the tea garden is being taken away, there will be nothing left with us, we only know to work in the plantation. We don’t even have that much education to do other jobs”, the workers raised concerns about their lack of other skills and education, which completely negates any possibility of getting employed in the airport [5]. While protesting for this issue, the prevalent structural questions of marginalization of the tea garden workers in Assam due to low wage and absence of land titles were also raised. Further, the illegality of the process of land acquisition by not conducting public audit, Environmental Impact Assessment and bypassing Industrial Dispute Act were questioned by AMSU [4].

 As protests continued, the Tea Estate administration announced a lockout where no workers were allowed to work and thus, not receive any pay, citing that the workers had not been arriving to work on time [21]. Amidst these, replies to various RTIs given by the aviation ministry suggested that there has been no formal proposal submitted by the GoA for this airport, although the ministry confirmed that the land was finalized by a team of the AAI [22, 23, 24]. This sparked a controversy and the Assam Tea Corporation chairman defended the state’s position by stating that the proposal is to be sent after site clearance [25]. According to a report by the Press Trust of India, there has been irregularities between the AAI and the GoA regarding the whole process of acquiring the land for the airport [20]. However, the GoA has a firm stand on constructing the airport on this particular land and is confident on getting its proposal approved from the Airport Authority of India [26]. 

This Greenfield airport is seen as a part of investment in the Barak valley for its ‘development’. On the other hand, a worker in the TE stated, “Amader toh kichhu bikaash hoichche na ekhane” (There is no development for us here) to argue that the airport is a space they can never afford to use [11]. Moreover, the land on which the TE stands is considered a government land which is being leased by the company, hence, the rights of the workers over the property are not being recognized [27]. Following the persistent resistance, the GoA announced a 1 lakh rupees goodwill compensation to 1263 families, which had been rejected by the workers as it does not cover all the families and their demands during the public hearings are not limited to monetary compensation [4, 17]. However, a public function was held in November 2022 with the plan to distribute the compensation by the Chief Minister to 1296 families which included 33 casual workers. The function was interrupted by some female workers protesting, raising slogans like, “We don’t want money...the tea plants were like our children... We can’t take compensation over their killings. If possible, give back our land, we’ll grow the plants again” [14, 28]. The movement against the land acquisition has been continuing till date. 

There has been no proposal submitted with a plan for the airport to be constructed, hence, there is no data. So far, 627 hectares of land has been acquired, uprooting 41,95,909 tea plants [3] and over 10,000 shade trees [4].