Land pattas to tea workers
Staff Reporter
Guwahati: Providing land pattas to tea garden workers will not be an easy task, with friction between the state government and tea plantation bodies showing no signs of letting up. Plantation bodies are eager to sit with the government and iron out the issues, but a positive signal to that effect has not been communicated by Dispur.
Sources from tea plantation bodies said that the decision to hand over land pattas to tea workers, after amending the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holding Act, 2025, was taken without any consultation with tea garden owners. The plantation owners are not against providing land pattas to tea workers, but the government should listen to the problems that are likely to arise from the move. A land area of nearly 2 lakh bighas of around 825 tea gardens is involved in such a move.
Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma had already indicated that if the tea gardens oppose the move to provide land pattas to the workers, government incentives to the tune of around Rs 150 crore are likely to be withdrawn. The incentives involve subsidies for capital investment, support for orthodox tea production, tax holidays, support for tea garden hospitals through PPP mode, etc.
Sources said that the government has offered to pay an amount of Rs 3000 per bigha of land taken from the tea gardens—an amount the organizations have termed “too meagre”. Labour lines in the tea gardens are scattered throughout the gardens, and giving such land to the workers will result in ‘villages’ cropping up here and there, which is likely to affect the management system of the tea estates. Currently, labour lines are directly controlled by the garden management; however, if the land in these lines is given up, it will grant autonomy to the workers, making it difficult to manage any potential unruly situations that may arise.
The tea plantation bodies pointed out that most of the tea garden lands are mortgaged with banks, and if part of these lands are handed over to the government, legal issues with the banks may arise. “These are the kind of issues that we want to discuss with the government, but the government should give us the opportunity. If the government adopts a tough stance regarding the transfer of land to tea workers, the results may affect the tea industry as a whole,” they added.
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