GUWAHATI, Jan 23 � The Tea Board of India has asked the North Indian tea auction centres to maintain complete anonymity of their buyers in line with the South Indian ones, during their e-auction biddings.
Tea Board Chairman MGVK Bhanu issued the above instruction (6 (29)/ LC/ 2011/P-XX/) on January 10, exercising the powers conferred on him under para 13 of the Tea (Marketing) Control Order, 2003 read with the Tea Act 1953, and stated that it should come into force with effect from March 1, 2012.
The country has six tea auction centres and all of them have introduced e-auction system by now. Three of them � Cochin, Coonoor and Coimbatore� are located in South India, while the rest three � Calcutta, Siliguri and Guwahati� are located in North India.
India is the first country in the world to introduce e-auction in tea trading. It introduced the present form of e-auctioning in April, 2009 at the Coonoor Auction Centre. Guwahati is the first North Indian auction centre to introduce this auction system.
It needs mention here that Prof B Mahadevan, Dean (Administration), Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore had told The Assam Tribune on June 24, 2009 that auction is a good market mechanism if only the basic design parameters are adhered to. The most important among others is the anonymity of the buyers, i.e., non-revelation of the identity of the bidder, during the bidding process. In manual auction, maintaining anonymity of buyer was not possible.
