Siliguri, Nov. 2: Tea produced by small growers is fetching lower price at auction centres because of inferior quality.

While the farmers and factory owners blame each other for the low price, the Tea Board of India is worried that if the quality of the produce is compromised, the marketability of the brew grown in the region will be hit.

Yesterday, tea board officials had made a surprise visit to a BLF at Mainaguri in Jalpaiguri district and destroyed around 5,000kg of rotten tealeaves, allegedly put for processing.

“It has become a practice for bought-leaf factories (BLFs) to blame us whenever any question is raised on the quality of tea produced at their units,” said Bijoygopal Chakraborty, the vice-president of the United Forum of Small Tea Growers’ Association.

“There is a norm that at least 30 per cent of the tealeaves supplied to a BLF should be fine. If we are supplying leaves having lower quality, why are the factories accepting them? They must reject them outright. We have information that some factories are processing tealeaves with poor quality. This must be stopped,” he added.

While tea manufactured in big gardens fetches Rs 120 per kilogram on an average at the auction centres, the price is Rs 80 for the brew produced by the small growers.

However, the factory owners have pleaded helplessness.

“On one hand, the tea board is insisting on quality production and officials are regularly visiting our factories. On the other hand, the farmers are pressuring us to accept tealeaves with poor quality,” said Sanjoy Dhanoti, the president of the North Bengal Tea Producers’ Association.

“We will have no option but to close down the factories if the growers do not supply us with tealeaves, 30 per cent of which should be of good quality. Five factories in North Dinajpur have stopped purchasing tealeaves because of this problem,” he added.

Asked about yesterday’s surprise check at Mainaguri, Dhanoti said: “There was some technical problem in machines and that was why the tealeaves were decayed. They (the factory) had just dumped the leaves in a corner and were not processing them.”

Amal Roychoudhury, deputy director of the tea board in Siliguri, said: “It is unfortunate that when the market is improving after a downturn that lasted for several years, a section of traders is concentrating on quantity and not giving any importance to the quality. Such tea, if sold in market, will only hit the reputation of the brew grown in the region.”