Leaders of the saffron camp in Alipurduar — a north Bengal district dotted with 63 tea estates — have decided to reach out to the tea population and elaborate on the central welfare schemes.

The move is being seen as a strategy to counter Trinamul in the run-up to the 2024 elections.

Last week, the Trinamul Cha Sramik Union — the tea trade union of Mamata Banerjee’s party — drew up a plan to engage tea workers to campaign among the tea population.

Manoj Tigga, the district BJP chief and also an MLA from the district, said he would personally visit all the tea gardens across the district.

“It is part of our Jana Sanyog Karmasuchi (peoples’ outreach programme) in tea gardens. We will start it in the first week of January. I will visit every tea estate, including the closed ones, and will talk to people. We will elaborate on the central schemes which benefit them. Our leaders will also underscore the fact that the Trinamul government of the state has been changing names of such schemes and making false claims that those are state government-run schemes,” Tigga, who is also BJP’s chief whip in the state Assembly, said.

Some of the schemes that the BJP intends to highlight include free food grains through PDS, LPG connections, and schemes related to rural housing, rural road construction and repairs and drinking water supply.

The outreach drive, he said, will start from Kumargram, the farthest block in the state in terms of its distance from Calcutta, which is on the Bengal-Assam border.

“We will also have a meeting in Alipurduar on December 29 to draw up the complete plan and a list of our party leaders who will visit the tea gardens,” said a BJP functionary.

In Alipurduar, John Barla, the BJP candidate who is now a junior minister in the Centre, had won with a whopping margin of two-and-a-half lakh votes at the Lok Sabha elections of 2019.

The BJP continued with its stellar performance at the 2021 Assembly polls as well in Alipurduar. It bagged all the five Assembly seats of the district.

However, over the past few months, Trinamul has increased its political activities and is simultaneously using the state machinery to extend social welfare schemes to the tea garden workers and their families.

Also, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has made a major announcement, that is, conferment of land rights to tea workers, which, observers believe, has helped Trinamul to somewhat revive its support base in the brew belt.

“The BJP seems to be under pressure as some tea workers are disgruntled that the MP, who is from a tea garden, has not done anything for them. In Alipurduar, the tea population decides results of any election, barring local civic bodies. It is evident that the BJP's plan has been chalked out to placate the tea belt,” said a local political observer.