Morcha wants GTA certificate power - Jurisdiction to issue Gorkha identity papers should cover country: Gurung

VIVEK CHHET

Darjeeling, Feb. 28: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today demanded that the power to issue Gorkha certificates be given to the GTA, whose jurisdiction in this case should extend to the entire community and not be limited to the Darjeeling hills.The demand is an indication of the Morcha efforts to create an image of a political party that represents the interests of all the Nepali-speaking people of India.A Morcha delegation led by party president Bimal Gurung placed the demand before Union home minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi today.Party general secretary Roshan Giri, who was part of the delegation, said: “We demanded that the GTA be given the authority to issue Gorkha certificates not just for the people living in the GTA area but for Gorkhas residing in the country. The Union home minister has agreed to look into the demand.”Gorkha certificates are needed especially during recruitment in police, paramilitary and the armed forces as the community is given relaxations in height, weight and in other physical measurements. The certificate is now issued by the sub-divisional officers.In keeping with its policy of creating a pan-India party for the Gorkha community, the Morcha delegation also demanded that recruitment and training centres for the Gorkha regiment of the army be set up in Varanasi, Darjeeling, Dehradun and Lucknow.“The home minister has told us that the issue concerns the defence ministry and assured us that he will fix us an appointment with the department concerned. We will be taking up the matter with the defence ministry soon,” said Giri.The Morcha attempt to raise issues that go beyond the Darjeeling hills is a bid to woo community members who had been supporting its statehood agitation despite staying out of Bengal.These members had formed Morcha units in the northeastern states, Delhi and Dehradun. But in recent times, many of these units had felt let down when the Morcha settled for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, an autonomous arrangement for the hills, instead of statehood.In fact, the Morcha had also fielded a candidate in the Mussoorie seat in the Uttarakhand Assembly elections held on January 30 to portray a pan-India image.This was the first instance of the Morcha contesting an election outside Bengal.Senior party leaders had then admitted that they were looking at the possibilities of contesting more seats in other states in the near future.Among other issues, the Morcha also repeated its demand to include reserve forests within the GTA’s purview. “We reiterated our demand for inclusion of reserve forests in the GTA. The home minister said he was examining the issue and the inter-ministerial comments on the GTA Bill were expected to reach the home ministry by this evening,” said Giri.Following the comments, the agreement would be sent to the President of India for her assent to the GTA Bill, which was passed in the Assembly on September 2, 2011.