A court hearing the ₹500 crore defamation case filed by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has directed Congress leaders Gaurav Gogoi, Jitendra Singh, Bhupesh Baghel, and others not to make any further comments about the Chief Minister’s assets. Jayanta Baruah, owner of the Asomiya Pratidin group, has also received similar instructions.
Seven people, including Gogoi, have been summoned by the court for 9th March to appear in the hearing on this matter. The order was passed by Civil Judge Nayanjyoti Sarma after hearing the counsel of the petitioner, the CM. In an ‘ad-interim injunction’ issued on Wednesday, the court restrained the three Congress leaders, the owner of the Asomiya Pratidin media group, and others from “making, publishing, circulating or disseminating any further defamatory statements or materials concerning the petitioner till their appearance in court.”
The judge stated that if an order of ‘ad-interim injunction’ is not passed, it will “defeat the justice and there is every possibility of multiplicity of proceedings.”
CM Sarma filed the defamation case after the Congress leaders made the allegations in a press conference in New Delhi on 4th February. The party accused Sarma of corruption and land encroachment, alleging that the Chief Minister and his family had illegally owned nearly 12,000 bighas of land across Assam.
Today, I have filed a defamation case seeking ₹500 crore in damages against Congress leaders Jitendra Singh, Bhupesh Baghel and Gaurav Gogoi for making false, malicious and defamatory allegations against me through a press conference. https://t.co/a9iLcghHiR
— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) February 10, 2026
The Congress party also launched a website to ‘keep track of corruption of the CM’. They claimed that the website would list all the land illegally owned by the CM and his family. But in reality, the website does not contain any such information. It only asks people to provide information if they have any knowledge of any property owned by CM Sarma and his family.
After the conference, Sarma, on Tuesday, 10th February, announced that he had filed a ₹500 crore defamation suit against Jitendra Singh, Bhupesh Baghel, Gaurav Gogoi, and others who had spread the allegations, as he believed the allegations made by the Congress leaders were false, malicious, and politically motivated. He has also named Jayanta Baruah, the owner of the Asomiya Pratidin group, one of the largest media groups in Assam that runs a news channel and several newspapers in the state.
