Darjeeling tea vs Nepal tea: planters ask Tea Board to stop passing off

The Terai Indian Planters' Association (TIPA), a body of tea growers in north Bengal, has asked the Tea Board of India to act against what it calls low-quality tea coming in from Nepal, reports published on Sunday, 8 November 2026, said. Its chairman, Mahendra Prasad Bansal, claimed that about 16 million kg of Nepal tea enters India every year and is often blended and sold as premium Indian tea, including as Darjeeling tea. The association wants tighter quality checks, stronger protection for the Geographical Indication (GI) tag of Darjeeling tea, a revival package for closed tea gardens and an impartial review of the industry.

Darjeeling tea carries a Geographical Indication tag, a legal label that ties the name to tea grown in a defined area of the Darjeeling hills. For a buyer, that tag is a promise about where the tea in the packet was grown. If tea from elsewhere is blended in and sold under the Darjeeling name, the buyer pays a premium for something that is not what the label says.

The planters' complaint is about that promise as much as about money. The association says the cheaper tea undercuts Darjeeling prices at a time when the hill gardens are already producing far less than they used to.

The Tea Board has dealt with this complaint before. In 2023, a Tea Board deputy chairman said the board had been issuing notifications and circulars to stop Nepal tea from being passed off as Darjeeling tea. No response from the board to the latest request had been reported when this story was written.

For tea drinkers, the dispute is a reminder that "Darjeeling" on a packet is a protected name, not a general style. Buyers who want the real thing depend on the Tea Board and the GI system to keep the label honest.

Peepals calculation: Darjeeling's output fell from 14.49 million kg in 1990 to 5.6 million kg in 2025, a drop of about 61% ((14.49 - 5.6) / 14.49 = 0.614). If the planters' claim of 16 million kg of Nepal tea a year is right, that is nearly three times Darjeeling's 2025 output (16 / 5.6 = 2.86). And the earlier Tea Board figures show Nepal's orthodox tea exports to India rising 50% in one year, from 10 to 15 million kg (5 / 10 = 0.5). Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: The request puts pressure on the Tea Board to say how it checks imported tea and how it stops Nepal tea being sold as Darjeeling tea.

Long-term: Whether the GI label is enforced will decide how much a "Darjeeling" packet can be trusted, and whether the hill gardens can keep charging a premium for their tea.

Who is affected: Tea gardens and workers in the Darjeeling hills and the Terai, tea traders and blenders, Nepal's tea exporters, and tea drinkers who pay extra for Darjeeling tea.

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