BJP brews Modi-tea worker meet

TT, Alipurduar: The BJP has decided to take a few tea garden workers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to north Bengal later this week and brief him on problems afflicting the tea sector.

Modi is slated to address a public meeting at Mainaguri in Jalpaiguri district on February 8.

Ganga Prasad Sharma, the BJP Alipurduar district president, said the party had initially planned to take a group of 15 workers from different tea gardens of north Bengal to New Delhi where they could discuss with the Prime Minister their plight.

"The state is playing dole politics to garner votes for Tri- namul in the tea belt instead of resolving important issues. Thousands of workers are being deprived of benefits by tea companies. The minimum wage has not yet been fixed by the state and no initiative taken to reopen closed gardens. We want the Prime Minister to know about these issues," said Sharma.

The BJP has changed the plan after Modi's visit to north Bengal was chalked out.

"We will take a few tea garden workers to the rally venue of Modi and meet him. A full documentation of the talks, which will include video, will be prepared. We also hope the PM will speak about workers in his address. In due course, the audio and video clips would be circulated across the Kailash Vijayvargiya and other BJP leaders in Jalpaiguri on Tuesday to check out the preparations for the public meeting of Modi. Picture by Biplab Basak tea belt to prove that the claims made by the state government are hollow and no major step has been taken by the Mamata Banerjee govern- ment to address the problems of tea workers," said Sharma.

The plan, BJP insiders said, has been chalked out to cement the support base of the party in the tea belt. In north Bengal, there are at least four such Parliament constituencies where votes of tea workers act as a decisive factor.

In the 2014 Parliament polls and the 2016 Assembly polls, the BJP had managed to secure a considerable portion of votes in the tea belt.

"However, in the past couple of months, Trinamul has managed to swing a section of our support base through counter campaign and doles. We need to revive the support base and feel the exercise of taking garden hands to Modi will help the party. Also, the workers who will be part of the delegation can be asked to narrate their experience before people," said a BJP insider..