John Barla, the Alipurduar BJP MP and Union minister of state for minority affairs, visited two closed tea gardens in Jalpaiguri on Saturday and slammed the Mamata Banerjee government for not taking steps to reopen the gardens.

Barla went to Samsing, a tea estate in Matiali, and Bamandanga-Tondu in Nagrakata, and assured workers of all help.

“It is because of frequent closure of tea gardens that workers and their families are migrating to other states for jobs. If these gardens are not reopened immediately, migration won’t stop. The state is not actively facilitating reopening of the gardens...,” said Barla.

Over the past couple of weeks, the saffron camp has recast its focus on the tea belt as three Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal — Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar — depend on its votes. In 2019, the BJP had won all three.

Barla Trinamul leader Bulu Chik Baraik, the state backward classes’ welfare minister, reopened the gardens but both shut down soon. “We doubt if it was just a political stunt,” he said.

Baraik countered this, saying they had got an investor for the estates, but technical issues cropped up. He accused Barla of doing “hardly anything for tea workers” as MP for five years and was now trying to woo them.