Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The Assam government is now going to allow tea garden owners to lease out five per cent of their total garden land areas to third parties for specified ancillary purposes. To this effect, the government has already tabled a bill, 'The Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings (Amendment) Bill, 2026' in the Assembly.
In 2022, the state government passed a bill that allowed tea garden owners to allow tea gardens to utilise up to five per cent of their total garden areas for eco-friendly tourism, cultivation of cash crops, animal husbandry, green energy, food processing units, social infrastructure, etc. The new amendment bill gives further freedom to tea garden owners, even to lease out five per cent of garden land to third parties.
After the passage of the 2022 bill, the government issued sanction letters to around 100 tea garden owners to start their business under the Assam Tea Tourism Development Scheme. The scheme had a provision to provide up to a Rs 2-crore grant to the tea garden owners for taking such ventures.
The stakeholders of tea gardens in the state have welcomed the move to allow garden owners to lease out their land. They say that such a move will enable tea garden owners, who have been suffering from a cash crunch due to the effects of climate change and global unrest, to opt for joint ventures with third parties or lease out their land to them. "However, the government needs to issue an SOP (standard operational procedure) for the leasing out of garden lands by their owners to prevent any problems that may arise at the district levels," one of the stakeholders said.
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