Tea garden workers of Terai on warpath against land bill

PRASHANT ACHARYA, EOI, SILIGURI, APRIL 5, 2023 : Thousands of tea garden workers from the Terai region on Wednesday marched in a protest rally at the heart of the Siliguri’s Hill Cart Road demanding a review of the West Bengal Land Reforms Amendment Bill 2023. The massive rally that started from Mallaguri reached Siliguri Sub Division Office.

A memorandum was submitted regarding the review of the Land Bill passed recently in the State Assembly for the tea garden workers. The members who participated in the rally under the banner of United Forum for Adivasi Rights(UFAR) carried placards, banners and posters. They shouted slogans against the Bill passed purportedly in the interest of the workers. 

The Bill has a provision under which the State can take back the land if the lessee owners do not use the land for the specific purpose for which they have been allotted land. There will be a mechanism to maintain surveillance. Workers demand for the review of this provision of the Land Bill of 2023 before its enforcement, also for the provision of homestead land rights to all Adivasi people residing in teagardens under records of rights Khatiyan and also demand that the tea plantation and the labour line area be excluded from freehold land. 

Some of the workers participating in the rally said the lease should not be for a limited period but in perpetuity and that the land should be provided along with the khatiyan and not on lease. The West Bengal Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill,2023, was passed in the State Assembly in February this year.

In north Bengal, around 1.5 million people reside on tea estates and many of them are living for generations. None of them has, however, any right to the land on which they stay as it has been leased out to companies by the state government to grow tea