The fate of the Pineapple Development & Research Centre in Bidhannagar, around 30km from Siliguri, has been plunged into doubt following chief minister Mamata Banerjee's announcement about the dissolution of the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority (SJDA).

The SJDA is a development agency under the state urban development department.

“The SJDA has been dissolved. We are contemplating the dissolution of some other similar authorities, which hardly have any function these days,” Mamata had said on Monday while speaking at an administrative meeting in Nabanna.

In 2011, the centre was established by the SJDA to help pineapple farmers of Darjeeling and the neighbouring North Dinajpur district. The project that came up on a 16-acre-plot had cost ₹12.6 crore.

The centre has 80 stalls, which were distributed among pineapple growers, along with a multi-purpose cold storage with a capacity of 1,600 metric tonnes.

“The centre, however, didn’t become completely functional. Now that the state government has dissolved the SJDA, we doubt whether the centre will open in a full-fledged manner at all,” said Arun Mondal, secretary, North Bengal Pineapple Growers Association.

Mondal, who is also the BJP president of Siliguri (organisational) district, alleged that the TMC government in the state was never sincere about opening the centre.

“It was opened in 2011 ahead of the Assembly elections. After the TMC came to power, it was inaugurated again in 2012. However, the state government never took interest in making it fully operational for the interest of the growers,” he said.

In north Bengal, pineapple is cultivated over an area of 20,000 hectares. Around 1 lakh people are directly or indirectly involved with pineapple cultivation and the average annual production is around six lakh metric tonnes.

From north Bengal, the fruit is sent to different parts of Bengal and also to states such as Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Maharashtra.

Kajal Ghosh, a board member of the SJDA, ruled out any apprehension regarding the pineapple centre.

“The SJDA has already provided the stalls to growers. But a section of them are reluctant to move into the centre and instead run their business from makeshift stalls off NH-27. Also, the cold storage is lying unused. The onus is on them,” said Ghosh.