NEW DELHI: Slightly over a month after trouble broke out at Mainagarh and Lalbagh in Assam’s Silchar district, about 1,700 tea garden workers have resumed based on the assurance that a proposed international greenfield airport at nearby Doloo would not adversely impact their jobs and livelihood.
“A fringe organisation, Assam Mazdoor Sramik Union, backed by the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), had needlessly provoked and instigated the labourers by resorting to mendacious propaganda against the proposed commercial airport, the first that Silchar will have in many years,” said CITU Silchar district president Samiran Acharjee.
Protests and sit-ins began against the Doloo airport on March 8, a day after a formal agreement – a MoU – between the Doloo Tea Company India Ltd, Barak Cha Sramik Union, Akhil Bharatiya Cha Mazdoor Sangh and Barak Valley Cha Mazdoor Sangh was signed.
After BJP government sought to develop a new international greenfield airport at Silchar, as the current one is operated by the Indian Air Force, it approached the Doloo Tea Company, to “relinquish 2,500 bighas (1,500 acres) of land, of a total of 5,733 acres to set up the airport”.
This was based on a prefeasibility study conducted by a multidisciplinary team comprising officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the state government. The Doloo tea estate was found the “most feasible site for a new airport out of all available sites near Silchar”.
“The tea estate is actually government land leased out to Doloo Tea Company,” Supriyo Bhattacharya, Cachar-Hailakandi CITU general secretary, told TNIE. According to the MoU, agreed upon by trade unions affiliated to all political parties, the Doloo Tea Company, “upon receipt of compensation from the state government, would clear the labourers’ outstanding provident fund contributions “with 15 days”.