He was the Dean of, the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics Faculty during 2007–2009, and a member of the statutory bodies of a number of institutions for varying periods.

After completing his school education in Shillong, Saikia, a National Science Talent Scholarship recipient, joined Hindu College, Delhi in 1972.

in physics from Delhi University in 1977, and soon took up a regular position in the Radio Astronomy Group of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and joined at Ooty on 16 August 1977.

The Ooty Radio Telescope, built indigenously by a very young group led by Govind Swarup had produced many interesting results and provided additional evidence in support of the Big Bang model of the Universe just a couple of years earlier.

[11][12][13] After spending two years at Ooty, he shifted to the TIFR Centre in the campus of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, where he did most of his Ph.D. work, completing his thesis in 1985 under the guidance of Vijay Kapahi and Govind Swarup.

Saikia's thesis on jets and compact features in extragalactic radio sources was based extensively on observations made with the Very Large Array where he spent several months during the summer of 1982.

Saikia was a visiting scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, New Mexico, USA in 2011, as part of the Resident Shared Risk Observing (RSRO) program, making the initial observations and testing data reduction procedures with Judith Irwin for the CHANG-ES (Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies—an EVLA Survey) project[16] with the then-newly Expanded Very Large Array and now known as the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array.

He has been a part of major international collaborations such as the CHANG-ES project led by Judith Irwin,[22] LeMMINGs (Legacy e-MERLIN Multi-band Imaging of Nearby Galaxy Sample) survey[23] led primarily by Rob Beswick, Ranieri Baldi and Bil Dullo and SAGAN (Search and Analysis of GRGs with Associated Nuclei),[24] a systematic study of giant radio galaxies (GRGs) led by Pratik Dabhade.

At IUCAA he has been devoting his time to carrying out a wide range of programmes and creating resources for improving pedagogic processes in astronomy and astrophysics in institutions of higher education in India.

During 2012–2017, while setting up Cotton University, Saikia had been looking into some of the problems confronting higher education in India, and also underlining the importance of maintaining institutional-level data.

Some of the topics explored include areas of silence in debates on higher education outlined in an occasional paper published by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library;[28] issues affecting research outcomes in our universities;[29][30] and results of an experiment in Cotton University to engage with questions, such as the fairness and effectiveness of examination and evaluation systems, and the correlation of a student's academic performance with prior education and social background.