MADURAI: The Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited (TANTEA) told the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court that it is legally not feasible for it to take over the possession of the Manjolai tea estates from the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited (BBTCL) and operate it.
TANTEA made the submissions on Thursday before a division bench of Justices R Suresh Kumar and G Arul Murugan, and said that in recent years, it has been facing losses due to various factors and had even obtained loans to pay wages to workers, staff salaries and retirement benefits. It stated that it lacked the financial capacity to take over the estates.
The counsel of the special secretary (Forest) of the Environment Climate Forest Department in Chennai submitted that the workers of BBTCL are not traditional forest dwellers, so the issue of allotting forest lands to them does not arise. If similar rights are to be claimed by agencies to whom forest land is leased out, it will be lost in the future.
Moreover, it will not be feasible for the government to consider the representations of BBTCL and requested that these issues not be combined in the PILs and can be dealt with separately.
Pursuant to the earlier court order, the stakeholders, including the state government, TANTEA and BBTCL explained their respective stances in the meeting. The court further adjourned the case to August 7.