JALPAIGURI, a town and district of British India, in the Rajshahi division of Bengal. The town is on the right bank of the river Tista, with a station on the Eastern Bengal State rail way. Pop. (1931), 18,962. It is the headquarters of the com missioner of the division.
The DISTRICT OF JALPAIGURI occupies an irregularly shaped tract south of Darjeeling and Bhutan and north of the State of Cooch Behar. Area, 2,932 sq. miles. Pop. (1931), 983,357. The district is divided into a "regulation" tract, and a strip of coun try, about 22 m. in width, running along the foot of the Himalayas, and known as the Western Duars, annexed from Bhutan after the war of 1864-65. The former is a continuous expanse of level
paddy fields. The latter is a centre of tea cultivation; there were 131 tea gardens in the district in 1921, 102,000 ac. were plucked, and the out-turn of tea was 43-i million pounds. The staple crop elsewhere is rice; jute and tobacco are largely grown. The fron tier towards Bhutan is formed by the Sinchula mountain range, some peaks of which attain an elevation of 6,000 feet. Buxa, standing 2,000 f t. high and commanding one of the chief passes into Bhutan, was formerly a cantonment ; it has a rainfall of 209 inches.