The West Bengal government has announced a Rs 313-crore development package for north Bengal, covering tea workers and infrastructure in the tea belt, while also beginning financial and food assistance for workers of closed tea estates.
Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari announced the measures during a series of meetings in Siliguri on Tuesday. He said Rs 5,000 had been paid to 19,524 workers from 21 closed tea estates ahead of the upcoming festivities. Each worker will also receive 50 kilos of rice.
Adhikari said the government was planning to increase the monthly foodgrain quota for every tea worker’s family in north Bengal from 35 kilos to 50 kilos from January. The announcement places welfare support for tea-estate communities alongside the larger development package announced for the region.
According to the chief minister, the Centre has approved the proposal to spend Rs 313 crore on the development of tea workers and infrastructure in the tea belt. The north Bengal development department will act as the nodal department for implementing the package, he said.
The announcement came during a day that included three administrative meetings. At Uttarkanya, the state government’s administrative headquarters in Siliguri, Adhikari also met 355 representatives from 85 organisations of the Rajbanshi community. Representatives raised several issues at the meeting, including the demand to include the Rajbanshi or Kamtapuri language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
In a separate meeting, the chief minister reviewed the progress of ongoing infrastructure projects in north Bengal. The report did not provide details of the projects reviewed, the implementation schedule for the Rs 313-crore package, or the specific infrastructure works that will receive funding.
The measures link three administrative priorities in north Bengal: support for workers affected by closed tea estates, development in the tea-growing belt and monitoring of infrastructure projects. The tea-estate assistance is directed at a defined group of workers, while the infrastructure component is intended to cover the wider tea-belt region through the north Bengal development department.
At a public meeting in Siliguri, Adhikari said he had visited north Bengal 10 times in the previous six months. He also referred to the region’s political importance for the BJP and said Siliguri would get either an Indian Institute of Technology or an Indian Institute of Management. No further details about the proposed institute, including its location, funding or timeline, were provided in the report.
The immediate next steps are the distribution of the announced food and cash assistance, the planned increase in the monthly foodgrain quota from January, and implementation of the Rs 313-crore package through the north Bengal development department. The government is also expected to continue reviewing ongoing infrastructure projects in the region.
