Delhi can neither sip nor spit - Centre wakes up to tea takeover red tape, Bengal plays hard to get

TT, Calcutta, Feb. 5: The Centre’s takeover of seven tea gardens has become nobody’s baby.

The Tea Board of India has hinted at a delay in the takeover of the tea gardens of the G.P. Goenka group and sought the state government’s intervention to ensure they remain in operation till then.

But the state government has rejected the request, saying the Centre should have thought through the process before acting in haste.

The board, which has been tasked by the Centre to take over the gardens, has informed the state government that it can acquire control only after it receives approval from the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) that deals with sick businesses.

Goenka’s Duncans Industries was brought within the ambit of the BIFR as a group in 2006 because of its faltering fertiliser business. The referral to the BIFR soon enveloped the tea gardens within the group.

A Rs 1,059-crore scheme for the revival of Duncans Industries was sanctioned by the BIFR in January 2012 and SBI was appointed as the monitoring agency. However, the revival scheme has been mired in a legal process and hearings were going on till November last year.

The BIFR referral was also  cited by Duncans two days ago while challenging the central takeover notification in Calcutta High Court.

According to sources, the Tea Board has now written to the Bengal chief secretary in response to a letter from the state’s top bureaucrat expressing the hope that the board would now deal with the mess arising from past liabilities.

In the letter to chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee, the Tea Board has mentioned that it is in the process of “seeking leave of” the BIFR so that the management control of the seven gardens can be taken over. “Seeking leave” means taking the BIFR’s approval for release from the reconstruction board’s control.

 “It is requested that the government of West Bengal may enforce the agreements made with the Duncans Industries Limited for settlement of labour and other statutory dues and for operationalisation of these seven gardens,” said the letter from Santosh Sarangi, the chairman of the Tea Board.

Sources said the Tea Board was referring to the tripartite agreement that Duncans, the state government and the unions inked in August 2015. They said the Tea Board wanted the state government, which owns the land leased to the gardens, to keep the seven estates running on the basis of the agreement.

“According to the agreement, Duncans has to pay a daily wage of Rs 121 to garden workers in addition to free ration, housing, medical facilities and electricity. Now, the Tea Board wants the state to intervene and enforce the agreement till the time the gardens are taken over,” a Bengal minister said.

The state government, however, said it would not entertain such a request and the Centre should have “looked into the details” before asking the Tea Board to take over the management control of the seven gardens.

“We don’t encourage cheap politics. The Centre should have looked into all the details before issuing the notification for the takeover of the management of the gardens. We did our bit and now the Centre has to ensure the rights of the garden workers,” said education minister Partha Chatterjee.

On January 28, the Union commerce ministry had invoked a rarely used section to authorise the Tea Board to take over the management of the seven gardens, saying they were being managed “in a manner highly detrimental to the tea industry and public interest”.

A spokesman for the Duncans group said it had not received any communication from either the state government or the Tea Board and the group would prefer not to respond to the latest developments since the matter was sub judice.

A minister said chief minister Mamata Banerjee “firmly believed” that the BJP-led Centre had “acted in haste”. “Now if the gardens cannot be taken over immediately, we don’t want to get involved as the Assembly elections are round the corner,” he added.

Justice Dipankar Dutta of Calcutta High Court today declined to hear the Duncans petition on personal ground and requested the chief justice to assign it to another judge.