GUWAHATI, Dec 21: The first tea museum of the Northeast will come up at Dibrugarh in Upper Assam in the year 2023.
This was disclosed before mediapersons by Assam Tourism Development Corporation Limited (ATDC) chairman Rituparna Barua on Tuesday.
Barua said that about 90 percent work in the first phase of the project has been completed.
Notably, an amount of Rs 3.14 crore was sanctioned by the North Eastern Council (NEC) and the Assam government for the first phase of the project.
The proposal for constructing a tea museum in Dibrugarh was approved by the state tourism department in 2016 and work on the ambitious project began in early 2017.
“An amount of Rs 40 crore has been approved by the NEC on a priority basis for the second phase of the project,” Barua said.
In the second phase, an auditorium, a model tea garden and a tea factory will be constructed inside the museum complex, which is spread over 2.66 acres of land.
“A tea museum in Dibrugarh, which is also known as the tea city of India, has been a long standing demand of the people. This will in fact be Northeast’s first tea museum and we will officially open it for visitors in the first part of 2023,” the ATDC chairman said.
Barua expected that the tea museum would woo both international and domestic tourists, and in the process, boost Assam’s tea tourism.
“Visitors to the museum will be able to relive the history of tea and the story that began in Upper Assam,” Barua said.