A group of Bengal ministers and a Rajya Sabha member held a meeting in Calcutta on Friday to review the condition of the tea industry and recommended the cancellation of the lease of a garden if it was closed for three months.

The recommendation, sources said, will be sent to chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

The meeting held in the conference hall of the state labour department in the New Secretariat Building was attended by ministers Sashi Panja, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, Moloy Ghatak and Bulu Chik Baraik, and MP Prakash Chik Baraik. The MP is from Alipurduar, a district with 64 tea plantations.

The group of ministers was formed by the Bengal cabinet to look into the problems plaguing the tea section and recommend remedial measures.

“We have recommended that the land lease of a tea garden be cancelled if the owner or the company abandons or closes down the estate without prior notice and doesn’t reopen it within three months. Also, while selecting new investors who are ready to take over gardens (both open and closed), their antecedents should be checked,” MP Prakash Chik Baraik said over the phone from Calcutta.

He said the antecedents needed to be checked as there were instances of estates being shut down after the closure.

“Also, a section of new owners refuses to clear the dues. These issues have to be resolved before letting the new investor run the garden,” added the MP.

In the course of the meeting which continued for two hours, the attendees underscored the need to reopen closed gardens. As of now, around 15 gardens are closed in the region.

Significantly, the meeting was held a day after Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP president, had accused the Mamata Banerjee government of failing to reopen closed gardens. The state has done nothing to improve health infrastructure in the tea belt, he said.

A Trinamul leader based in Alipurduar said the reopening of closed gardens could largely help the party secure Lok Sabha seats in the tea belt in the forthcoming general election.