India, Aug. 28 -- The Assam government's new rule that mandates police scrutiny of all land transfers between people belonging to different religious communities is bad in law and mischievous in intent. It is of a piece with the current polarising political mood in that state and militates against the ethos of the Constitution. Worse, the addition of another layer of bureaucratic red tape will, in the long run, work against Assam's economic interests. The state government needs to rethink this policy.

The policy is premised on chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's conviction that the above-mentioned land transfers need to be scrutinised from a "national security angle", considering the "sensitive nature of the state". In practice, the new...