Govt. planning to develop 500 acre tea garden in Kumaon

The state government is planning to develop tea gardens on 500 hectares in Okhalkanda block of Nainital district. If implemented, the tea gardens would be the biggest in Kumaon division of the hill state. At 1,052 hectares, the Garhwal division’s 150-year-old tea gardens are the oldest in Uttarakhand. The project is supposed to generate employment for thousands of people in the hill state.

Prakash Chandra, chief development officer of Nainital district, said, “The land for the project has already been identified in Dungri gram panchayat. Work will start as soon as we get the budget and other requisite permissions. We hope to generate direct and indirect employment for at least 5,000 people in the hills.”

Earlier, in year 2015, in a big blow to the workers agitating against the acquisition of tea estate land for smart city project in Dehradun, Uttarakhand high court had dismissed the public interest litigation filed by tea garden workers. The workers who were set to lose their jobs after the state government’s takeover of the tea garden land for the smart city project, had filed a petition in the Nainital HC in November 2015.