President nod to GTA, over to CM

Mamata Banerjee, Bimal Gurung

March 7: The President today gave her assent to the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Bill, the signing clearing the decks for the formation of the hill set-up while putting the onus of implementation on Mamata Banerjee. The chief minister had last week blamed the Centre for the delay in forming the GTA.

From all indications, there are still some major obstacles to the formation of the GTA, especially with the state government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha differing on the process of elections to the new body.

An official in Writers’ Buildings said this evening: “The Centre has done its bit. The ball is now in the chief minister’s court.”

The first obstacle is the issue of the added territories, Gorkha pockets in the Dooars and Terai that the Morcha wants to be brought under the GTA. The Justice Shyamal Sen committee, which is examining the issue, is yet to submit its report. It has missed its six-month deadline and is now working on an extension. It is unclear when the panel will submit its report.

The Morcha is determined not to allow elections to the GTA, till the Gorkha-dominated mouzas are brought under the new body. The party has left it to the state government to find “ways and means” of putting the GTA in place and is keen on running the body with nominated representatives as an interim arrangement.

“I spoke to the chief minister this evening and thanked her as well as the Union government for expediting the formation of the GTA,” Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri told The Telegraph. “But we have also made it very clear that we will not agree to elections to the GTA unless the issue of the added areas is settled. It is practically impossible to hold elections to the GTA until and unless the new areas are added. It is now up to the state government to find ways and means to make the GTA functional.”

Morcha sources said by “ways and means” Giri was demanding that party representatives be nominated to the GTA to make the new hill body functional till elections were held.

But the state government is not in favour of nominating Morcha representatives since there is no provision for it in the GTA agreement.

“There is no bar on conducting elections to the GTA or in completing the process of forming the body till the territory question is resolved. That was agreed upon by all three parties that signed the GTA agreement,” chief secretary Samar Ghosh said at Writers’ Buildings this evening.

So, Ghosh said, after the GTA Bill with the President’s assent is sent to the state government, it will be notified and made into an Act.

“Once it becomes an Act, and this should take about a week, we will start the election process. The first step will be initiating the process of delimitation,” said Ghosh. He said, for now, elections would be held in the current Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council area.

“The election process should not take more than three months,” Ghosh said. “New territories, if added later, would find representation in the body eventually.”

“The Election Commission of India or the state election commission has no role in this. The GTA agreement and the Bill clearly state that the elections will be conducted by the state government,” he added.

On the government’s stand, a Morcha leader said: “Unless we have a clear idea of the population of the entire GTA area, including the added ones, how can the 42 constituencies agreed upon in the GTA agreement, be created?”

The other problem that the cash-strapped state government might face is of finances. Other than the Rs 200 crore that the Centre has promised to the GTA every year for three years, the government has agreed to pay the salaries of all GTA employees which would come to a little over Rs 100 crore annually. Other than this, the state has also agreed to share the expenses for creating infrastructure for the development of the hills, the amount of which has not been estimated so far.

North Bengal development minister Gautam Deb said: “This money is being set aside by the state government. Also, we will be spending money for development of the GTA areas from the North Bengal Development Council funds.”

But officials at Writers’ said this would be a “recurrent expenditure” and the government would have to work hard to provide for it every year.(Telegraph)