Separate identity

Siliguri, Sept. 22: The Tea Board of India has come out with a new logo featuring an elephant for brew produced in the Terai-Dooars region.

The board had been toying with the idea of creating separate logos indicating the geographical location of the brews produced in India for some time now.

The Terai-Dooars logo, featuring an elephant’s head with the words written above it, is expected to be soon seen on packets of tea produced in the foothills of Bengal.

“We have entrusted Lintas, an advertising agency, for making the logo. We expect to release the logo by this year,” Basudeb Banerjee, the tea board chairman, had said in April.

Today, Roshni Sen, the deputy chairperson of the board, confirmed that the Dooars-Terai logo is ready. “We will soon obtain the trademark for it,” she said from Calcutta. “Our attempt was to make separate logos for tea produced in different parts of the country for identification.”

The tea board had earlier created three logos — a rhino, hills and a woman with two leaves and a bud — to brand the Indian teas produced in Assam, Nilgiris and Darjeeling, respectively. The brew belt of north Bengal then raised a demand for a separate logo for the teas produced in the Terai and the Dooars.

Sen said the board also made two new logos for Assam and Nilgiri to mark orthodox and CTC teas, respectively.

The new Assam logos will carry the words Assam Orthodox and Assam CTC in capital letters with the picture — a rhino in front of two leaves and a bud — remaining the same. Similarly, the new Nilgiri logos will be Nilgiri Othodox and Nilgiri CTC with the picture of the hills remaining intact.

There will be only one version of the Darjeeling and Terai-Dooars logos as no CTC is produced in Darjeeling and no orthodox tea in the foothills of Bengal.

Sen said: “Only the Darjeeling logo is Geographical Indicator registered. Now that the CTC and orthodox logos have been segregated in Assam and Nilgiri, we will soon approach the GI registrar in Chennai to obtain registration for the orthodox logos of these two regions.”

On the CTC logos, including the Terai-Dooars one, she said the board would obtain the trade marks. “But we are yet to decide whether to go for GI status of these logos or not,” Sen added.