Banerjee held a high level meeting with senior officials and people’s representatives of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Coochbihar districts at Uttar Kanya on Wednesday afternoon.
The chief secretary Basudeb Bandopadhyay, director general of police, Surajit Kar Purakayastha and other senior bureaucrats including additional chief secretary agriculture, Sanjeev Chopra and additional chief secretary Urban development department, Debashis Sen, were also present.
The directorate will look after tea gardens and resolve problems cropping up from time to time. On Tuesday, the Chief Minister had announced that the state government would formulate a policy to take over six tea gardens in north Bengal and later auction them.
Banerjee had also launched a scathing attack on the Centre for its failure to run seven tea gardens which it took over in January namely Birpara, Garganda,Lankapur, Tulsipara, Huntapara, Dhunchipara and Dimdima tea gardens belonging to the Duncan group.
The Centre had floated a tender to auction one of the tea gardens but later scrapped the plan as there were no takers.
The state government is looking after the workers of these tea gardens and they are given rice at Rs 2 a kilogram, mobile medical units visit the tea gardens regularly and provide free check-ups and medicines when required. Children of garden workers are being sent to non formal schools.
Mamata Banerjee accused the Centre of being totally indifferent towards these tea gardens and their workers. The directorate will maintain a liaison between the tea gardens and the state government.
The chief minister on Wednesday, announced the formation of several bodies to carry out the all round development of north Bengal. Karim Chowdhury, Trinamool Congress leader who lost the election from Islampur has been made chairman of North Bengal Development Board and Harka Bahadur Chhetri has been named vice chairman.
The board will have a number of TMC legislators including Sabitri Mitra who lost the election from Malda. Mitra has been made a member on the board of the North Bengal Transport Corporation.
TMC veteran Mihir Goswami will replace Sourav Chakraborty as the chairman of the board. To develop sports in North Bengal, a sports council has been set up with Baichung Bhutia as
its helm.
Table tennis player Mantu Ghosh, cricketer Riddhiman Saha, Shiv Shankar Paul and Man Ghisingh, Subhas Ghisingh’s son have been named committee members. Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday completed her four day trip to North Bengal.
The chief minister opened two super- speciality hospitals in Jalpaiguri and Mal, a Rabindra Bhavan is coming up at Alipurduar and Rs 3 crore has been earmarked for beautification projects. The newly formed district will serve as a model for five new districts that will come
up soon.