Agartala: After Guwahati and Jorhat, the third tea auction centre of Northeast India is likely to be in Dharmanagar in Tripura.
Santosh Saha, chairman of Tripura Tea Development Corporation (TTDC) said that the Tea Board of India is actively considering to set-up a tea auction centre in Tripura.
“We need to set up proper warehousing facilities to facilitate the setting up of a tea auction centre,” Saha said.
The first tea auction center in Northeast India was set up in 1970 in Guwahati. The second tea auction centre of the region was set up on May 21, 2020 at Jorhat in Upper Assam.
The TTDC chairman said the auction centre could be set up at Dharmanagar, the headquarters of the North district.
While Tripura produces a lot of tea, tea gardens from neighbouring Karimganj, Hailakandi and Cachar district of Assam also will be able to sell their tea at the tea action centre, Saha said.
“Tea gardens in Tripura always faced problem in auctioning tea because of the distance,” the TTDC chairman said.
Earlier, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha and the former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb had asked New Delhi to take up with Bangladesh so that planters from Tripura can auction tea at Sreemangal, which is just 10 km from northern Tripura border.
“Even if we get a tea auction centre in our state, we would still try to get access to Sreemangal tea auction centre to reach out to a wider market,” Saha said.
