Mamata Banerjee Plucks Tea Leaves In Bengal, Dances With Garden Workers

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday visited a tea estate in Darjeeling district, plucked leaves along with workers besides talking to them.

Wearing the tea pluckers' apron, Ms Banerjee also sang a few lines with the workers and shook a leg with them.

The chief minister is on a six-day visit to the northern districts of the state.

"Today, after wearing their clothes, I plucked tea leaves. I learned tea plucking from them. Now, I can go to any tea garden and pick tea leaves. This is my biggest lesson today. I remember I wrote a poem about them (tea leaves pluckers) long ago," she later said.

The Trinamool Congress supremo has over 100 books to her credit and several of them are of poems.

"We have blood relations with the people of the Hills. The Hills became my own home," she added.

Ms Banerjee also spoke to the tea garden workers and distributed winter garments to them.

During a trip to Darjeeling last year, Ms Banerjee took to making momos at a roadside shop in Darjeeling besides serving 'pani puris' to the people of the Hills.

Later, Ms Banerjee went to a community hall here to bless her nephew Abesh Banerjee who tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend at a ceremony here.

On Friday, the chief minister is scheduled to distribute land rights documents to people residing in the tea gardens here.

Granting land rights has been one of the key demands of the tea-growing areas of the state.

According to an official, more than 3 lakh workers reside in tea gardens in the northern part of the state.

Ms Banerjee, who reached Kurseong on Wednesday, is scheduled to attend a series of state-organised public distribution programmes during her visit.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)