Wait for GTA only till July: Gurung - 20-odd outfits at morcha meet

AVIJIT SINHA

Bimal Gurung and John Barla (left in the above picture) in Gorubathan on Thursday. Pictures by Kundan Yolmo Gorubathan (Kalimpong), March 29: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha will revive its demand for Gorkhaland and drop the idea of hill administrative set-up if the state government delays the polls to the body beyond July. After a meeting with tribal leader John Barla at the DGHC rest house here this afternoon, Morcha president Bimal Gurung said the party would not wait for the formation of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration after July. “We agreed to the government’s decision to hold elections to the GTA in July and request the high-powered committee (formed to look into the demand for the inclusion of Gorkha-dominated areas in the body) to submit its report by June. However, if the committee fails to come up with the report by June and the state doesn’t hold polls in July, we will not wait further. The Morcha will then revert to the demand of the separate state,” Gurung told journalists. The Morcha had earlier insisted that polls could be held only after the territorial jurisdiction of the GTA was fixed. But the party backed down after a meeting between chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Gurung in Calcutta on March 24. Gurung today apprised Barla and other tribal leaders of the decisions taken at the Calcutta meeting. The Morcha and Barla faction of the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad held talks with 21 organisations supporting the inclusion of the Dooars and Terai in the GTA and decided to form a joint action committee to intensify their campaign in the plains. Barla said the joint committee would be formed at a meeting in Nagrakata in Jalpaiguri on April 2. “Our programmes for the inclusion of the Terai and Dooars in the GTA will be announced then.” The joint committee’s immediate challenge will be to counter the proposed agitation of the state leadership of the Parishad to protest the Morcha’s claim to the Dooars and the Terai. The Parishad along with 18 other organisations have called a general strike in the Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts on April 10 and 11. Gurung said the Parishad was not a force to be reckoned with in the plains. “The tribal outfit lacks minimum support base in the plains and cannot be considered a force. Even today, Barla is the top leader of the adivasis. The Morcha and Barla together can bring lakhs of people to the streets,” said the Morcha chief. He said the number of persons who could be nominated to the GTA from the Dooars and the Terai if the region was included in the body would be worked out by the Morcha and the government. “We have high hopes that all 398 mouzas in the Dooars and Terai will be brought under the jurisdiction of the GTA. The mouzas will be represented in the GTA through nominations. The number of the nominees will be decided through discussions between the state and the Morcha,” he said. Gurung pointed out that the GTA would comprise 50 members and five of them would be nominated by the governor. “If the mouzas in the plains are added to the GTA, the figure has to go up and for this, the GTA Act has to be amended.” Although Barla said the joint committee’s agitation programmes would be unveiled at the meeting on April 2, sources hinted that a plan had already been drawn up. They said the agitation would begin in the first week of April and end in May. “It has been decided that public meetings will be held in at least three places in the Dooars and Terai in the second week of April. The rallies will be followed by a 48-hour general strike in the region in the third week,” said the source. The joint committee will organise “mass gheraos” in all subdivisional and block development offices in the Dooars and the Terai in the first and second weeks of May. “A 12-day long relay fast has also been planned for the second week of May followed by a padayatra from Jaigaon to Siliguri,” the source added.(The Telegraph)