Guwahati, February 13 The Gauhati High Court has given the green light to the Assam government to proceed with granting land rights to tea garden workers, after the Indian Tea Association (ITA) challenged the amended rule passed in the assembly, Advocate General Devajit Saikia said here on Friday.
The hearing of the case was held on February 4, with lawyers from both the ITA and the state government presenting their arguments.
The ITA had challenged the amendment rule, claiming that it would change the structure of the tea gardens, Saikia told reporters here.
He added that the planters' group had also petitioned that the move would hamper tea production and the functioning of the gardens.
The high court did not issue a stay order in the case, but praised the Assam government, stating that the initiative falls under the state's welfare laws, Saikia said.
He added that the court directed that the state government can proceed and grant ownership rights to the workers in exchange for Rs 500 per bigha of land.
Saikia said that there are 850 tea estates in the state, with labour lines in 707 of these gardens.
"Generations of workers have lived in these lines, without any rights over their land. The Assam government has started the process of granting land rights to them, and ownership will be transferred to the workers living in the labour lines inside the tea gardens," he said.
The Assam cabinet had decided to provide land rights to tea garden workers, following which the assembly had passed an amendment bill in the recently concluded winter session to enable the government to distribute land in tea estates' labour lines among the workers for housing ownership.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had claimed that the Assam Fixation of Ceiling of Land Holdings (Amendment) Act, 2025, was brought in to correct a historic mistake by providing land rights to the workers who have been toiling in tea gardens for the last 200 years, uprooted from their native land and brought here by the British.