The Tata Tea / ULFA Story

"If we don't pay the militants, we get kidnapped or even killed. And when we buy peace with money, we are dubbed anti-national."

- An Assam based tea company official, in 1997.

"The lack of security cannot be an excuse for the industry to help the militants financially."

- The Assam Government, commenting on the Tata Tea/ULFA controversy, in 1997.

"The Tatas refused payment to the Assam Gana Parishad before the last assembly election and Mahanta was upset. Now he has got a chance to settle scores with them."

- Paresh Barua, ULFA Commander-in-Chief, in 1997.

The Tata Tea / ULFA Story: A Scandal Unravels

In August 1997, the Bombay police arrested a woman along with her newborn baby and two bodyguards from the Santacruz airport as she was leaving for Delhi. The woman was Pranati Deka (Pranati), cultural secretary of the banned militant organization United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the wife of ULFA's finance secretary Chitrabon Hazarika. Prior to this incident, the Assam and Delhi police had been following Pranati for a few months. The primary reason for the police's interest in Pranati was not her link with the ULFA. It was her association with India's leading tea company Tata Tea Ltd. (Tata Tea) that had led to her arrest. Tata Tea was alleged to have borne the expenses for her check-up at the Jaslok hospital, plus travel and hotel charges for her and her two companions. In September 1997, the manager of Tata Tea's North India Plantation Division in Assam, S S Dogra (Dogra), was arrested on charges of 'aiding and abetting terrorism and assisting persons involved in waging war against the state.'

Charges were issued against the company's welfare officer Brojen Gogoi (Gogoi) also, who had accompanied Pranati to Bombay. Dogra's arrest led to a controversy that soon engulfed many top names from India's corporate and political circles. Ratan Tata, the CEO of Tata Tea's holding company, Tata Sons, rushed to Delhi to meet the then Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta (Mahanta), Assam Chief Secretary V S Jafa (Jafa), the Union Home Secretary K Padmanabhaiah, the Home Minister Indrajit Gupta (Gupta) and the Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujaral (Gujaral). Later, the issue was discussed at a meeting between Gujral, Mahanta and Gupta, as well as at a meeting of the United Front coalition's core group of leaders.

The Tata Tea-ULFA controversy brought to the attention of the rest of the country, what the Assam tea industry had had to live with over the last two decades - kidnappings, murders and extortion - both by the ULFA and National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants.

Background Note

Tata Tea is the second largest tea company in India, after Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL). A part of the Tata group of companies¹, Tata Tea was incorporated in 1962 as Tata Finlay Ltd. with a technical and financial collaboration with James Finlay & Co Glasgow, UK. The company commenced business in 1963, with a tea factory at Munnar, Kerala and a blending/packaging unit at Bangalore, Karnataka. Over the next few decades, the company acquired many tea plantations and set up new factories at Kakajan in Assam and in Munnar.

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1] The Tata Group, one of the most reputed industrial houses in India, is into diverse businesses such as steel, automobiles, tea, information technology and chemicals. The two holding companies of these businesses, Tata Sons and Tata Industries, are held by the Tata family.