By Nava Thakuria*
Asom Bani Ceases Amid Assam Tribune Woes
The Unceremonious Departure of a Popular Assamese Weekly
Guwahati: In a quiet but deeply felt blow to Assam’s journalistic landscape, the iconic Assamese weekly Asom Bani — a beloved Friday fixture for generations of readers — has vanished from newsstands. The publication, which had been a steady companion for over seven decades, printed its final edition as the Friday supplement on September 12, 2025, and has not appeared since.
The closure marks the most visible casualty yet of the prolonged financial distress gripping the Guwahati-based Assam Tribune group, one of the oldest and most respected media houses in Northeast India. The crisis, which had been building for years, became acute after the Covid-19 pandemic devastated newspaper circulation figures and advertising revenues across the country.
Asom Bani was born on July 1, 1955, the brainchild of the legendary entrepreneur and visionary Radha Govinda Baruah. Over the decades, it faithfully chronicled — every Friday — some of the most defining moments in modern Assam: the struggle to establish Assamese as the medium of instruction in schools, the powerful anti-influx movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the sudden eruption of separatist-influenced armed insurgency, repeated waves of social unrest, the emergence of strong regional political forces, and eventually the gradual erosion of their popular base. The weekly maintained a consistent focus on issues concerning the indigenous communities of Assam.
Steered at different times by some of the most respected names in Assamese letters and journalism — Satish Chandra Kakati, Tilak Hazarika, Phani Talukdar, Nirod Chowdhury, Homen Bargohain, and Chandraprasad Saikia — the publication was guided in its final phase by editor Dilip Chandan, who served with quiet distinction for nearly thirty years.
In its later years, Asom Bani lost its standalone identity and was integrated into Dainik Asom, the group’s flagship Assamese daily, appearing exclusively as the Friday supplement. When the management decided to discontinue even this arrangement, no public explanation was offered about the weekly’s fate.
The broader collapse of the group’s financial health tells a story familiar to many legacy newspapers in India. The pandemic triggered a sharp fall in both readership and commercial advertising. Salary payments to journalists and other employees became irregular. The employees’ union repeatedly brought to public notice the non-payment of retirement benefits and substantial pending dues from the State Directorate of Information and Public Relations for government advertisements already published.
At one point, persistent rumours suggested the entire Assam Tribune group might be sold to a prominent Guwahati-based television company. The management issued a strong denial, calling the reports “baseless” and “misleading,” and reaffirmed its “unwavering commitment to editorial independence, journalistic integrity, and continued service to readers, advertisers, and all stakeholders.”
Yet barely a month later, on September 17, 2025, the group transferred operational control of Dainik Asom — a newspaper now well over sixty years old — to a separate media entity owned by young entrepreneur Kishor Borah, who also runs the Assamese satellite news channel ND24. The new management took charge of the daily but showed no interest in continuing the Friday supplement.
The transition came at a high human cost. On September 18, more than 70 employees — many of them senior staff enjoying extended tenures on lump-sum monthly honorariums — were suddenly left without jobs. The previous management had given assurances that all legal dues would be cleared within weeks. Those promises remain unfulfilled. The affected workers have now moved to the labour court, claiming total outstanding payments of approximately six crores of rupees.
The irony is sharp. The Assam Tribune group had once earned national recognition as the first media house in India to fully implement the statutory Majithia Wage Board recommendations back in 2012. Today, many of its former employees say the same institution appears to be adopting delaying tactics to avoid settling long-pending dues to retired and terminated staff.
The Assam Tribune itself — the English daily that gave the group its name — was launched on August 4, 1939, with Lakshminath Phukan as its first editor. It continues to hold the position of the highest-circulated English newspaper in the entire Northeast.
Media observers and critics have also pointed to perceived shifts in the group’s editorial approach in recent years, which they argue have occasionally strained its long-standing reputation for balance and credibility. These include the extensive coverage given to the 2019 anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests across the Brahmaputra Valley — where the newspaper provided significant space to voices opposing the Union government’s initiative to grant citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim families from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, framing it as a potential violation of the Assam Accord of 1985 — as well as a series of detailed reports surrounding a local press club election that some described as overly focused, with allegations of bias and unprofessional tone toward certain individuals involved.
Prafulla Govinda Baruah, the second son of the founder Radha Govinda Baruah, led the group until his own passing on December 14, 2025, at the age of 93. Under his watch, the house had maintained a generally respected voice in public discourse. Whether that legacy of credibility can survive the present turbulence remains one of the most anxiously watched questions in Assam’s media circles today.
For now, the silence surrounding Asom Bani speaks the loudest — a once-vibrant weekly that chronicled the hopes, struggles, and transformations of an entire people every Friday has quietly disappeared from the newsstands of Assam.
*Senior Journalist
