The Tea Planters' Association Whose Name Is on a Football Shield
Indian planters formed an association in 1935. A football shield still contested in Jorhat carries its name, and in September 2025 it was proposing a minimum price for green leaf.
The Assam Tea Planters' Association counted a seat on the Tea Cess Committee as its first achievement.
Twenty-two Indian planters met at a namghat in 1935. The organization they built gives its name to a football tournament still contested at Jorhat Stadium, one a Manipur club won in 2025. As of September 2025 the same association was also in the news for something else entirely: proposing a floor price for green leaf.
Twenty-two planters, a namghat, and one seat on a committee
On 23 June 1935, twenty-two Indian planters assembled at the Amolapatty Namghat in Dibrugarh, a prayer hall, for a meeting. Benudhar Rajkhowa chaired it.
They came out of it with a committee. Prasanna Kumar Barooah of Dibrugarh as chairman, Rajani Kanta Baruah as secretary, Rameswar Sahariya as treasurer, Jogendra Nath Barooah as assistant secretary, Karmabir Nabin Chandra Bardaloi as a member.
The formal first general meeting followed in Dibrugarh on 28 October 1936, and that date is the one counted as the organization's birth. Forty-eight members from different parts of the Brahmaputra Valley attended; the association then had seventy-nine tea gardens as members1. They constituted themselves as the Assam Valley Indian Tea Planters Association, which became the Assam Tea Planters' Association.
The new body won the right to nominate a member to the panel of the Tea Cess Committee, an official industry board.
Organized tea planting in India already had an association, and had for some time. The Indian Tea Association describes itself as founded in 18812, "the premier and the oldest organization of tea producers in India."
The shield
The Assam Tribune reported the 54th ATPA Shield being played at Jorhat Stadium4, and ANI, reporting on the 2016 edition, called it "one such few major football tournament that is played in Assam."3
By that 2016 account, "many reputed clubs from across the state" competed, and the final that year was decided between Oil India's own OIL XI and Shillong Lajong FC, a club from neighbouring Meghalaya, with OIL XI winning 3 to 1.
Nearly a decade later the shield was still being played for, now carrying a bank's name alongside ATPA's own: the 2025 final was billed as the Federal Bank ATPA Shield.5 Football 4 Change, a club from Manipur, beat Jorhat Town Club 3 to 1 at Jorhat Stadium, Houlungou scoring twice either side of a Jorhat Town reply, to take the tournament in 2025.
September 2025: the same body, a different kind of standard
On 12 September 2025, the Assam Tribune ran a piece headlined "Assam tea fail FSSAI norms, ATPA calls for urgent industry reforms."6
ATPA chairman Samudra P Baruva said the time had come for North India's tea, Assam and West Bengal both, "to make a decisive shift toward quality." "Quality doesn't just mean taste," he said, "it means compliance with FSSAI standards."
ATPA proposed a minimum price of Rs 25 per kilogram, about US$0.28, for green leaf carrying at least 40 percent fine count (the proportion of tender, correctly-plucked leaf a factory actually wants). At the price he named, he said, bought-leaf factories would be compelled to reject substandard leaf.
Small tea growers, family-scale operations distinct from the old colonial-era gardens, now supply nearly half of Assam's tea7, a state output that runs somewhere in the range of 630 to 700 million kg of made tea a year8, roughly 700,000 to 770,000 US tons.