iContext
A state shaped by its river
The Brahmaputra runs for roughly 650 kilometres through Assam from east to west, according to the state's Environment and Forest Department, and its basin covers most of the state's area. Settlements, transport routes and the economy of the valley are organised around it, and around the seasonal floods that follow the monsoon.
Sarbananda Sonowal was born in Dibrugarh district in Upper Assam, on the southern bank of the river. His public life began in the student movement of the state: he served as president of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) in the 1990s, an organisation that had been central to the Assam Movement and is a signatory to the Assam Accord of 1985.
Government of Assam, Environment & Forest Department — Geophysical features
iiEntry into state politics
Moran, 2001
He entered electoral politics with the Asom Gana Parishad and was elected to the Assam Legislative Assembly from Moran in 2001. In 2004 he moved to national politics as the Member of Parliament for Dibrugarh in the 14th Lok Sabha.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment in Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India, a petition he had filed challenging the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983. The Court struck the Act down. The case is discussed on the Parliament page.
He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2011, later served as its state president in Assam, and was elected to the 16th Lok Sabha from Lakhimpur in 2014, when he also joined the Union Council of Ministers.
iiiMajuli
The river-island constituency
For the 2016 Assembly election he contested from Majuli, an island in the Brahmaputra. The district administration describes Majuli as the world's largest river island; its present area is recorded as 483 square kilometres, down from about 1,250 square kilometres before 1950, and its population in the 2011 Census as 1,67,304.
Results were declared on 19 May 2016. He won the seat, and the alliance led by the BJP — with the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodoland People's Front — secured 86 of the Assembly's 126 seats. He was re-elected from Majuli in the 2021 election.
Majuli was formally inaugurated as a district on 8 September 2016, with its headquarters at Garamur. The district's official website records that in 2016 it became the first island in India to be made a district.
Majuli District Administration — District at a glance; reporting by PTI/Scroll, 8 September 2016
ivThe Chief Ministership
24 May 2016 — 9 May 2021
He was sworn in as Chief Minister of Assam on 24 May 2016 at Khanapara in Guwahati, with the oath administered by Governor P. B. Acharya. He was the first member of the BJP to hold the office in Assam.
The period saw a number of large infrastructure projects in the state reach completion. Several were projects of the Government of India — executed by Union ministries and their agencies — carried out alongside state government programmes. The register below lists documented events of the period with the body responsible, so that each outcome can be read against its source rather than attributed to a single office-holder.
