The revised Bill passed by the Assembly Wednesday has tweaked the definition of an original inhabitant as a person “who has been living in that area along with his family for [the] last three generations up to January 1, 2006” and defines a generation as “a period of 25 years of continuous living.”

The Assam government has, on multiple occasions, said that the institutions targeted by these restrictions are Barpeta Sattra, Batadrava Than and the sattras of Majuli, all of which are important centres of Assam’s neo-Vaishnavite traditions.

The amended Bill also proposes that the District Commissioner of the district may evict “unauthorised occupants” from the “protected heritage area” so defined. However, it has made a broad set of exemptions for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, “indigenous ethnic communities”, which it has defined as Moran, Motok, Chutia, Koch Rajbonshi and Ahom, and “disadvantaged groups”, defined as people from the tea and Adivasi communities, as well as those notified by the government “from time to time.”

In the discussion on these amendments, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that they were “secular”.

“If there’s any religious institution more than 250 years old, within 5 km around there, only the indigenous people there will stay… Even I can’t go and stay there. It is not discriminating against religious minority. It is for everybody… And the original inhabitants will stay there, whether they are Hindu or Muslim,” he said.