India to declare tea national drink in 2013

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India will declare tea as the national drink by April next year, the country's top planner has said.

"The drink would be accorded national drink status by April 17 next year to coincide with the 212th birth anniversary of first Assamese tea planter and Sepoy Mutiny leader Maniram Dewan," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia was quoted by local media, as saying on Saturday.

Ahluwalia made the remarks in his address at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of the Assam Tea Planters Association in Jorhat in Assam.

Maniram Dewan was the country's first indigenous tea planter who also took part in India's struggle for the freedom movement, he said.

India is the largest producer and consumer of black tea in the world, with 83 per cent households consuming the beverage considered to be the cheapest in the world after water.