After the day’s tea leaves were plucked and the forest paths grew quiet, governance came alive at a special camp held by the Darjeeling district administration in the Rangerong tea garden near here on Tuesday night.

The first-of-its-kind night camp in Bengal under the Amader Para, Amader Samadhan campaign, which has been renamed in Nepali as Hamro Goan, Hamro Samadhan (our village, our solution) in the Darjeeling hills, was organised to ensure that tea garden workers and other rural labourers can be part of this participatory governance initiative.

Under this scheme, every area that is covered by a polling booth is allocated a sum of ₹10 lakh for projects, which have to be proposed by villagers through a community discussion with government officials.

The state government has allocated a sum of ₹8,000 crore for this initiative.

“We decided to hold the special night camp to ensure that tea garden workers who are out in the field and thus unable to attend day camps, too, can engage in this participatory governance,” district magistrate Preeti Goyal said.

The camp, which started from 6pm at the Bangladhara community hall, covered polling booth number 23/237 of Rangeroong tea garden and the forest area of Rangbull gram panchayat.

The Rangerong tea garden is 14km from here.

Over 300 people, mostly women, were present at the camp who came up with a list of projects like installation of solar street lights, construction of children’s park, playground, development of a burning ghat, repair of public library and an anganwadi centre.

“Engineers will now be sent to conduct a survey and the details will be verified by the block development officer for rural areas and subdivisional officers for municipality areas before the projects are approved by the district magistrate,” Darjeeling (Sadar) subdivisional officer Richard Lepcha said.

Even if the cost of the projects crosses the ₹10 lakh limit in a particular area, they will be taken up under other schemes.

The participatory governance camps started on August 2 and will carry on till November 3, covering 1,465 booths in Darjeeling.

“A total of 670 camps will be held during this period. To date, we have held 98 camps in Darjeeling and covered 224 booths,” said Lepcha.

Night camps will be organised in 80-odd tea gardens in the hills.

According to government records, a total of 57,841 people have attended the camps, while 1,599 schemes have been submitted from the grassroots to date in the district. “The approved schemes will be completed by mid-January,” said an administrative source.

During the night camp in the Rangerong tea garden on Tuesday, a Duare Sarkar camp was also held to correct various government documents.