Lobbying on to allow sale of tea gardens

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, September 26

With the government planning to allow sale of tea gardens in Dharamsala, the Smart City is set to lose its green patch.

Sources said efforts were made to allow the sale of a big tea garden in Dharamsala in two Cabinet meetings. It could not happen due to objection from some ministers. The agenda is likely to come up before the Cabinet in the next meeting, the sources said.

Hectic lobbying was going on for allowing the sale of tea gardens. Highly placed sources said some ministers, who were opposing the sale, had got phone calls from the highest office in the neighbouring state to mellow their stance.

There are two big tea gardens in Dharamsala. Both are owned by a single family.

In the last five years, the government has allowed a hotel to come up on a tea garden land near the Kunal Pathri temple. The hotel, owned by influential people, is nearing completion.

Sanjay Sharma, BJP leader from Dharamsala, said in the last elections, the Congress made it an agenda and accused the former BJP government of trying to sell lands in the state to outsiders. In the last five year, the government failed to prove a single such allegation. On the contrary, the present Congress government was now openly selling the tea gardens in Kangra to outsiders. If the BJP government was voted to power, all these land deals would be cancelled and inquiry would be ordered, he said.

Pradeep Kumar, a resident of Dharamsala, said tea gardens were the identity of Dharamsala. The owners of the tea gardens had got exemption from the Land Sealing Act on the plea that they would maintain the tea gardens that were the heritage of Kangra. However, now if they planned to sell it the land should vest in the government. If government allowed the sale of tea gardens that it should also allow the small tea farmers also to sell their land and let tea disappear from Kangra, he said.

As per the Act, nobody could own more than 300 kanals. Only tea garden owners in Kangra district are allowed to retain hundreds of acres, with the condition that they will not sell their lands and maintain these.