Kolkata: With no steps taken by the Centre despite assurances of the high revenue generating tea sector in Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government has now stepped in to give respite to around 50,000 workers to help reopen three closed tea-garden at Dooars in north Bengal. The state government had recently floated tender to seek bidders to lease out three closed tea-gardens in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar with an aim to re-open the same. This is just the beginning of the process to re-open all the closed tea-gardens in the region. 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. The three tea-gardens were earlier run by three different companies. The lease agreement with those companies has been terminated as the gardens were closed for a long time and dues of workers were not cleared. The authorities of the companies were untraceable, said the state Labour Minister Moloy Ghatak adding that the tenders were floated only after cancelling the agreements with the previous owners. 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. Even in 2019 Lok Sabha election run up Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured of necessary steps for the tea sector in Bengal that is the second largest tea-producing state in the country. With the assurances yet to be materialised, around 4 lakh people of the region those are directly and indirectly involved in the trade have lost all hope and even chased the BJP MP from Alipurduar John Barla when he went to Bandapani tea garden to distribute relief during lockdown. 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. Recently, seven out if 28 has reopened benefiting atleast 10,000 people. With reopening of all the tea gardens total 50,000 people will get benefitted.

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