The Tata Tea/ULFA Story

TATA TEA's DEALS WITH THE ULFA AND THE GOVERNMENT Contd..

Tata Tea claimed that ULFA had availed of the service without its knowledge and that Pranati was just one of the cases referred for treatment for a serious blood disorder during her pregnancy. ULFA sources too said that at no point of time had Tata Tea been told about Pranati's ULFA links. However, there was a flaw in the company's defense. Tata Tea's scheme provided only for treatment of cancer, heart and eye ailments in the BM Birla Hospital at Calcutta, Tata Memorial Hospital at Bombay, and Shankar Netralaya at Madras respectively. Pranati's treatement at the Jaslok hospital was outside the scope of the scheme and therefore came under scrutiny. Moreover, the fact that senior official like Gogoi had accompanied Pranati weakened the company's stand.

The company also said that the controversial meetings with militants were mostly organized by the intelligence agencies themselves, partly to negotiate for the release of their senior executive, and also to ensure the safety of the thousands of families working in the tea gardens. Tata Tea further claimed that the central government had itself sanctioned the controversial medical assistance scheme. The then IB Director later confirmed that the Tatas had indeed been communicating with the IB about all their dealings with the ULFA, including the Bangkok meeting ^[7].

This infuriated the Assam state government as it had not been given any information regarding the Tata Tea-IB and Tata Tea-ULFA dealings.

It was not difficult to understand why the company did not make the Mahanta government a party to these deals. The 1990 airlifting of Doom Dooma tea estate executives out of the tea estates was also done without the knowledge of the Mahanta government. Even the Assam police did not have any clue about the undercover operation. The tea industry was reported to have lobbied with the central government and requested for the AGP government's dismissal after the airlifting. In November 1990, the Congress-supported Chandrashekhar government dismissed the AGP government and imposed President's rule in the state. In the state assembly elections in 1991, the Congress defeated the AGP. Mahanta was reported to have ‘never been able to forgive the tea industry'for this.

Mahanta came back to power after the 1996 elections. He soon expressed his displeasure with the tea companies, stating that though they had taken the earlier Hiteswar Saikia government into confidence whenever militants demanded funds from them, there had been no such coordination when the AGP was in power during 1985-90. Analysts however said that Mahanta seemed to have overlooked the fact that in corporate and business circles, it was believed that AGP had links with ULFA and that the party could not be counted upon to protect their interests^[8] . Mahanta also said that the AGP government had not received any complaints from Tata Tea or its employees working in the state regarding any security infringement. Jafa said, “Most of the tea companies never bothered to tell us their security-related problems.”

^[7] Business India, October 20, 1997.

^[8] AGP sources admitted that in several constituencies, the party's candidates were tacitly helped by militants in the
1996 elections.

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