Delhi team to visit gardens

Dilip Ghosh

TT, Alipurduar/Siliguri: Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said on Sunday that a team from Delhi headed by a Union minister would soon visit the sick and closed tea estates of the Dooars.

"We had requested the Centre to intervene and help the distressed workers of the closed and sick tea estates in this part of the state. We have come to know that a team headed by a Cabinet minister and comprising Tea Board of India's members would soon visit the gardens to collect information about the prevailing situation," Ghosh told the media in Alipurduar on Sunday.

Political observers said the move ahead of the panchayat polls was significant.

Earlier, former Union minister of state for commerce and industries Nirmala Sitharaman had visited closed tea estates in the region to look into the problems faced by workers.

Ghosh said leaders of the Trinamul-affiliated trade unions were hand-in-gloves with a section of tea companies. "This is why the workers are not being able to organise movements against non-fulfilment of their rights because such companies are threatening to close down the tea estates," said Ghosh.

Told about the charges, a senior leader of Trinamul Tea Plantation Workers' Union said: "BJP leaders are not speaking truth. It is our government and our party which have always stood by the tea workers. The leaders and their elected representatives of the BJP at the Centre have not done anything to end the plight of workers of the closed and sick tea estates."