Buoyed by record sale, tea auction body seeks land

SNS, Siliguri, 23 May 2014: Ahead of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Uttarkanya, the north Bengal secretariat, the Siliguri Tea Auction Committee (STAC) has planned to demand a suitable land measuring over 100 acres from the state government for setting up an auction centre with better infrastructure facilities.

The plan comes at a time when the present centre has made a record sale of 107 million kg of tea in the financial year 2013-14. The STAC plans to celebrate the feat and organize a ‘charity auction’ and cultural programmes on 30 May.

Funds collected from the charity auction will be donated to the chief minister’s relief fund.

North Bengal development minister Gautam Deb is scheduled to attend the auction.

“Since its inception, the STAC has auctioned less than 100 million kg of tea. But it set a record by auctioning 107 million kg tea in 2013-14 out of the total of 300 million kg tea produced in this region,” former STAC chairman SK Saria said.

STAC vice-chairman Basant Agarwal said the committee has targeted handling of 150 million kg in the future.

Interacting with reporters here, Mr Agarwal said: “We need to develop more infrastructure to achieve our goal. We are facing problems of space at the present auction centre. Traffic congestion on connecting roads adds to the problems.”

“We plan to demand a suitable plot of land from the state government to set up tea auction centre with adequate warehouse facilities. If the government provides 100-150 acre of land, the problems in the tea auction centre will be resolved,” Mr Agarwal said.

Asked to comment on the present status of a ‘Tea Park’ in Siliguri,Mr Agarwal said: The Tea Park is presently non-functional due to technical reasons. A total of 165 esntrepreneurs took part in the Tea Park in response to the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority’s developmental programmes. The SJDA took the land on a lease basis from the railway department and sub-leased it to the entrepreneurs. As a result, entrepreneurs are in no position to mortgage the land and take loans from banks by showing the sub-leased land.”

“No one is interested to invest in setting up the infrastructure from their own esources,” he added.

Notably, the Tea Park project was conceived when former state urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya was the chairman of the SJDA. After the Trinamul came to power, the then SJDA chairman Rudranath Bhattacharya had implemented the project.

STAC members said the SJDA had assured them of solving the land problem, but “nothing was done.”

The Jalpaiguri Tea Auction Centre, which is not running well, will be developed soon if the Tea Park starts functioning, they said.