Talk:Brahmaputra chars

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Page scope

Brahmaputra chars is a Growing Area in the Brahmaputra Valley growing region. It treats the cannabis grown and destroyed on the river islands and sandbars of the Brahmaputra along its whole course in Assam, and of the Jamuna in Bangladesh down to its meeting with the Ganges, and the chars as a landscape. Majuli lies inside the area and has no page of its own here. The districts belong at their own pages.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the area's extent, its sites and the news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the area is on the map

The Sentinel (30 December 2021): about 15 bighas of cannabis destroyed at "Latibari char, Bamunialga char, and Patakata char", Chunari police station, Goalpara district.
Northeast Now (25 January 2022): the Nalbari police destroyed "at least three bighas of cannabis cultivations", grown "in a sandbar". The report names the two men accused; the article does not.
Niyomiya Barta (1 May 2023): about 6 bighas of cannabis on government land in the Brahmaputra's riverine char-chapori area at Dhakuakhana, Lakhimpur district, grown by unknown persons, destroyed; a case under the NDPS Act. This is the only report read from the chars of upper Assam.
Niyomiya Barta (6 September 2023 and 24 January 2026): drives against cannabis grown in the yards of families on Baghmara Char (4 No. Baghmara Char in the 2026 report), Alopati Char police station, Barpeta district.
The Sentinel (1 January 2025): more than 100 mature plants in the Panikhaiti area under the Sontoli outpost, Boko, "near the Brahmaputra river". The report does not call the site a char. A 2017 report by the People's Archive of Rural India places Panikhaiti, in Mahtoli panchayat of Kamrup district, on the river bank beside the chars, which is why the area takes it in.
Ajker Patrika (20 December 2022): a 40 kg cannabis plant seized from a farmer's yard on a remote Jamuna char, Sariakandi upazila, Bogura district. Bangla Times (21 November 2024): a cannabis garden in a homestead yard on the remote Jamuna char of Kathma Krishnanagar, Noarpara union, Islampur upazila, Jamalpur district. The man in each report is named in the source and not in the article.
In 1893 the Deputy Commissioner of Goalpara mentioned a prosecution for gathering the plant from a river chur: wild gathering, not cultivation.

How the border is drawn

The sources put chars along the whole Brahmaputra in Assam: 14 districts from Sadiya in the east to Dhubri in the west, Majuli included. The Jamuna is the same river's main stream in Bangladesh, and cannabis has been seized on its chars in Bogura and Jamalpur districts. The area therefore follows the whole braid belt rather than the districts where cannabis happens to have been reported.
The border is a proxy: the braid belt of the river, meaning its channels and every char between its banks. It is drawn from the river-area polygons in OpenStreetMap along the Brahmaputra and the Jamuna: the main channel, the side channels next to it, the gaps between channels closed so that the chars join, and the outer edge only, so that every island and sandbar inside is included. Majuli district is added whole. The belt is cut at the Assam state boundary upstream and at the Ganges confluence by Aricha downstream; the Old Brahmaputra, which leaves the main stream at Bahadurabad, is not included. It covers about 10,300 km² in one piece, about 7,500 km² of it in Assam and 2,800 km² in Bangladesh.
The area is bigger than the char land alone: the sources give about 3,608 km² of char areas in Assam and about 1,000 km² of chars on the Jamuna (1992), while the border also takes in the channels between them.
Chars shift with erosion and deposition every year, so the outline is approximate even for the present river.

Bangladesh and the parent region

The parent region, Brahmaputra Valley, covers the Assam valley floor only, so the Jamuna reach in Bangladesh lies outside it. The chars are one river landscape on both sides of the border, so the area is kept as one page under its Assam parent rather than split at the border.

Title

The Assam sources call the land "char" or "char areas", "char/chapori", "sar areas or sandbars", or "the riverine areas (island) of the river Brahmaputra"; the Bangladeshi reports say "Jamuna char" (যমুনার চর). None gives the belt as a whole a proper name. Brahmaputra chars describes it in the sources' own word, after the river's name along most of its course; Jamuna chars redirects here.

Figures that differ between sources

Length of the char tract in Assam: about 800 km (Assam Administrative Reforms Commission, 2005), 720 km (Nezine, 2015), 728 km (People's Archive of Rural India, 2017), 650 km from Dibrugarh to Dhubri (Prashnani and others, 2019).
Share of Assam under chars: 4.6 per cent (Administrative Reforms Commission; Nezine) against about 5 per cent (People's Archive of Rural India).
Development blocks: 59 (Administrative Reforms Commission; Nezine) against 55 (People's Archive of Rural India).
Chars per district: The Sentinel (2023) gives the 2002–03 survey's counts, which add up to its total of 2,251. A table in Nezine (2015) gives other counts per district (for example 351 in Barpeta, 313 in Dhubri, 187 in Goalpara) that add up to 2,089 and does not say which survey they come from. The article uses the 2002–03 counts.
The survey's 2,251 units are "villages" in the Administrative Reforms Commission's report and Nezine, and "sars" (chars) in The Sentinel.

The article gives the Administrative Reforms Commission's figures, which agree with the Directorate's own page and with The Sentinel on area (3,60,927 ha) and population (24,90,097).

Growing status

The status is Active: cannabis was destroyed or seized on chars in Assam in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2026, beside the river at Panikhaiti in 2024, and on Jamuna chars in Bangladesh in 2022 and 2024. No source read says that growing there has ended.

Sources read and not used

The large police operations in the char areas of Goalpara, South Salmara-Mankachar and Barpeta since 2020 were against opium poppy, not cannabis.
Reports of cannabis destroyed in the char districts without saying the site was a char: Gauripur police near Dangirchar market, South Geramari, Dhubri (December 2024); Bhuragaon village, Lahorighat, Morigaon (April 2023); Paharpara and the hill fringe, Nagarbera, Kamrup (January 2024); Bihapara, Garaimari, Chhaygaon, Kamrup (December 2020); Hahchari and Chamariyapam, Boko and Chhaygaon (January 2021); Sontoli, Bardiya and nearby villages near Boko (December 2022); Sontoli and Mahtoli, Boko (December 2025); Jaborimari, Kalgachia, and Dighirpam, Baghbar, Barpeta (2025).
A 2026 report on drugs in east Goalpara says ganja is grown at home by many families in a list of places that includes the char areas of south Barpeta; it names no char and no case.
Kurigram district, Bangladesh: cannabis plants seized at Islampur char in Char Bhurungamari union, at Tilai union on the Dudhkumar, and in a village garden at Dakshin Banshjani, all in Bhurungamari upazila (2026). These places lie west of the Brahmaputra, outside the border.
No source read reports cannabis grown on the chars of Dhubri, Morigaon, Majuli or the rest of the upper valley, other than Dhakuakhana.