Dibrugarh (Assam)

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that the EU-India free trade agreement will ensure that Assam tea shipments will reach the European countries with zero tariff.

Addressing a public rally at the Khanikar Parade Ground here, Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken Assam tea to Paris and Berlin along with other countries of the European bloc through the recently signed trade pact.

''The EU-India trade pact will further boost Assam tea exports to European countries'', he asserted.

India and the European Union on Tuesday sealed a landmark free trade agreement - billed as the "mother of all deals" - to create a market of two billion people, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top EU leadership unveiling a transformative agenda to leverage trade and defence in protecting the rules-based world order.

In a bid to woo the tea tribe community ahead of the upcoming assembly elections, the union minister thanked the tea garden workers for giving a "distinct identity to Assam and India as one of the leading exporters of tea to the world".

''Dibrugarh is known as the tea capital, and garden workers have ensured that the aroma of Assam tea reaches the world. The state is recognised in the world for its tea. It is the hard work of labourers that has ensured this," he said.

Asserting that tea garden workers have strengthened the state's economy, Shah said they also ensured that the beverage remains a leading export commodity.

The BJP leader alleged that the Congress did "nothing for the welfare of garden workers who have positioned Assam, particularly Dibrugarh, as the tea capital of the country".

''The chief minister has amended the law to ensure that the tea garden workers get ownership rights of land," he said.

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Shah accused the Congress of giving a toolkit to defame Assam and its tea.

Tea garden workers constitute a sizeable electorate in the upper Assam assembly constituencies, which was earlier considered a Congress stronghold, but they have slowly shifted their allegiance to the BJP since 2014.