Summary:
The tea gardens for which tenders have been floated include Madhu Tea Garden and Bandapani Tea Garden in Alipurduar and Surendranagar Tea Garden in Jalpaiguri. Interestingly, Nirmala Sitharaman had visited Surendranagar in 2015 when she was Industry and Commerce minister and even assured of taking over closed tea gardens following a meeting with representatives of the state government and Tea Board. There are around 310 registered tea gardens in north Bengal while more than 1000 are smaller in size. At present there were 28 closed tea gardens including 11 in Alipurduar and 17 in Jalpaiguri. With reopening of all the tea gardens total 50,000 people will get benefitted..