Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari on Sunday announced a ₹313.30 crore rollout for the Pradhan Mantri Cha Shramik Protsahan Yojana, breaking a two-year deadlock that kept the central scheme stalled in Bengal.
The implementation blueprint, cleared during a high-level administrative meeting chaired by chief secretary Manoj Kumar Agrawal on Saturday, marks the project’s formal activation after a protracted political and bureaucratic delay. The previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress administration had allegedly withheld the formation of the mandatory state-level committee, a prerequisite that parked the funds while target beneficiaries went without coverage.
On Sunday morning, Suvendu took to social media to detail the fiscal breakdown, framing the multi-crore outlay as an intervention to overhaul the healthcare, education, and basic amenities matrix for north Bengal’s tea population — a key support base for the BJP.
“We are committed to the comprehensive welfare, development of health and educational parameters of our hardworking Tea Garden Workers of North Bengal. To ensure expeditious and smooth progress, our State Level Committee recently finalized the implementation plan for the ‘Pradhan Mantri Cha Shramik Protsahan Yojana’ (PMCSPY) scheme,” wrote Suvendu on X, making it clear that the newly formed committee had finally cleared the administrative hurdles.
The scheme targets a workforce of more than 10 lakh plantation labourers across Assam and Bengal.
Suvendu wrote: “With a total financial allocation of ₹313.30 Crores, we are bringing transformative changes to the lives of our ‘Cha Shramiks’”.
The state’s execution strategy relies heavily on three core sectoral subheads to distribute the ₹313.30 crore corpus.
The largest chunk, an allocation of ₹177 crore under the ‘Cha Shramik Shiksha Yojana’, is earmarked for upgrading school infrastructure and funding quality-control interventions for the children of plantation workers.
Another ₹72 crore has been assigned to the ‘Cha Shramik Swasthya Suraksha Yojana’ to fortify medical infrastructure inside the gardens, where institutional healthcare has historically remained skeletal.
The remaining ₹63 crore will fund the ‘Cha Shramik Aashray Yojana’ to construct 321 resting sheds—splitting the construction to place 88 units in the hills and 233 across the plains. According to the official specifications, these units must have off-grid solar power installations, drinking water taps, and ceramic-floored toilets.
The operational command of the project has been handed to the north Bengal development department. The department is tasked with coordinating an expansive inter-ministerial grid that includes the health department, the Paschim Banga Samagra Siksha Mission, and respective district administrations to prevent systemic leakages.
The Saturday meeting that settled the terms included a full bench of the state bureaucracy, including the administrative heads of women and child development, finance, health, and backward classes welfare.
The sudden acceleration of the central scheme underscores a shift in state policy, aggressively pulling stalled central resources into the north Bengal terrain to consolidate the government’s footprint on the tea belt.
By explicitly pointing to the two-year delay under the previous regime, the Suvendu administration is pitching the delayed welfare infrastructure as an institutional rescue act for a labour force that has been historically used as a vote bank.
Stakeholders guarded
The tea industry management remained guarded in its response to chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s statement.
“For any industry to run appropriately, it needs the participation of both the employers and employees to make it vibrant. Till now the government has shown inclination to support the employees only by bringing in various schemes for their benefit but there is a total absence of benefits and schemes for the employers of the tea industry,” said a
tea planter.
Many planters said that a one time grant of ₹40 crore cleared by the Union commerce ministry for the industry in 2017 is yet to materialise. “It is heartening that the government is encouraging outside investors to invest in Bengal, but what about those who have already invested but are still running at a loss?” asked another planter.
Tea industry principals maintain that they have been consistently apprising their needs to the Centre and the Tea Board frequently. There are around 390 tea gardens in north Bengal.
“There is a need to subject the same regulations to Nepal tea as is applicable to domestic tea. Nepal has slapped a 40 per cent import tax on Indian tea but we do not charge any import tax on their tea. Every import of Nepal tea should also be tested,” said a planter.