At a meeting on June 28, the Board has added more stringent qualifications to the new rules announced in April 2000 that had prompted a boycott of the Calcutta and Siliguri auctions. Small operators, the prime backers of the boycotts, say the new changes threaten their existence. The boycotts had been prompted by the modifications suggested by the Indian Institute of Management and notified by the Tea Board on April 24. The rules were to be implemented from July 3, but were deferred till July 17.

The IIM's modifications were made to the earlier rules that were based on a report by the Ahuja committee in 1986. The Ahuja committee had actually done its work on the basis of the Tea Marketing Control Order of 1984.The Board has not changed the April 2000 rule that had specified higher purchases for smaller free samples, and was the target of the buyers' ire. A buyer of CTC tea will still have to purchase a higher 0.225 to 0.449 per cent of the total quantity of tea sold at the Calcutta or Siliguri auction for being eligible to get a meagre 25gm free trade small sample. The specification for medium and large buyers remains unchanged. In fact, the Board has specified progressively higher purchase levels over the next two years. In 2001-02, the minimum purchase has to be 0.250 to 0.499 per cent.

The latest norms also make it mandatory for buyers seeking free samples to attend at least six auctions in the first half of the year, and seven in the second half. This applies to buyers of CTC, orthodox and dust teas.

Buyers of Darjeeling teas have to operate in three auctions in the first, second and fourth quarter of each year, and four auctions in the third quarter (during which tea volumes at the auctions peak).

Earlier, buyers seeking free samples had to operate in a minimum of 13 auctions a year - but there was no period-wise stipulation. CTTA executive committee member Tapan Kumar Roy accused the Tea Board of toeing the line of the planters and sellers. He said the latest rules will hit the small traders, but benefit the big players - exporters/ shippers and multinational companies.

Roy said this will ruin tea trade in West Bengal as the major operators in the local markets are small traders selling tea in loose form. He said that, other than exports, Darjeeling teas are sold only in West Bengal by local traders in loose form. If present norms are adhered to, the major number of tea traders will have quit the trade. Roy said members of the Tea Board's subcommittee on auctions are being hand picked from the ranks of multinational companies, planters and exporters and this is why views of small and medium tea buyers have been ignored. Even upcountry buyers of Punjab and Maharastra do not find a place on the sub-committee.

The anger of the small traders has reached such an extent that they are thinking of breaking away from the Tea Auction Buyers Association, which is headed by Arun Grover of Hindustan Lever Ltd. Roy also pointed out that the Tea Board keeps its eyes closed to the violation of Tea Marketing Control Order 1984 by sellers who do not attend 13 sales in a year and also do not sell 75 per cent of the manufactured tea through auctions. But no action against them has been spelt out in the revised rules.