On September 25, 2020, the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) on celebrated the golden jubilee anniversary of its operations to market the commodity across the world.
The first auction at the GTAC was held on September 25, 1970. On the opening day, the first lot of the commodity produced by Haroocharai Tea Estate was bought by Jafar Ali, proprietor of Diamond Tea Company in Jorhat in upper Assam.
Though the auction centre started its journey in 1970, efforts were on to establish such a unit in the city of Guwahati since the 1960s. After receiving huge demand from the local tea planters to open an auction centre in Guwahati, the Assam government decided to open such unit on August 11, 1970, and appointed former chief secretary Dharmanda Das as the first chairman of its committee. In the first year of its operations, the GTAC had sold 9.1 million kg of tea at an average price of Rs 5.68 per kg. It used to organise auctions at a guest house of the Nehru Stadium in the city. Today it has its own land and building at the heart of Guwahati City, adjucent to the State Secretariat Complex, equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure.