Force 1000 for Morcha -

Darjeeling, April 11: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today announced a recruitment drive for “Gorkhaland Police”, a force that the party says will be trained to do “social work”.
Those who have not exceeded 30 years are eligible to apply. The volunteers, however, will not get any salary.
During the Gorkhaland agitation in the eighties, the GNLF, too, had its own force, the Gorkha Volunteer Cell, commonly known as the GVC, which had been raised to fight the CRPF then deployed in the Darjeeling hills.
Morcha leaders said their “police force”, complete with uniform, the colour of which is yet to be decided, and khukuri did not go against their idea of democratic struggle.
“The khukuri is our community’s identity and should not be misrepresented as a symbol of armed struggle. We still believe in the democratic form of protest and our force will be trained to do social work,” said Binay Tamang, the media and publicity secretary of the Morcha.
Although the force is being raised for crowd and traffic control during party meetings and rallies, Tamang said, the guidelines for recruitment is stringent. “Only youths below the age of 30 will be taken into Gorkhaland Police and they must be both physically and mentally fit (see chart). The Morcha will form a selection committee which will recruit the force,” added Tamang.
Around 1,000 volunteers would be recruited. While 300 youths (male and female) will be selected from Darjeeling, the force will induct 200 each from Kalimpong and Kurseong and 100 from Mirik. Later, the remaining 200 will be selected from Siliguri and the Dooars. Once selected, the youths will have to undergo a training for three months.
“We will hold a centralised training camp for them in Darjeeling. During the training, we will provide them with uniform and will take care of their boarding and food.”
Although Tamang evaded questions on why the party felt the need to come up with its “own force”, the move comes in the wake of the Morcha announcement that it would not seek any permission from the district magistrate to hold its political programmes.
“They will come handy when we organise rallies and public meetings. The youths will also be trained to perform rescue acts during landslides and fire accidents,” said Tamang. At the end of the three months, the “Gorkhaland police personnel” will be given ID cards and any act of indiscipline will be strictly dealt with which could even amount to “expulsion from the force”.
Rahul Srivastava, the Darjeeling superintendent of police, has refused comment on the raising of the Morcha “force”. “We have not been informed about this. We will have to look into the issue and discuss it with higher authorities before I can comment.”
Lawyers differ on the legality of raising such a force. Poonam Kumar Sharma, a lawyer from Darjeeling, said: “I do not think there is any legal interpretation on the usage of the word police. However, if the Morcha is forming a volunteer cell to control crowd and traffic during their political meetings and for social services, I do not think there is anything illegal about it. Political parties do use the services of volunteers for such activities.”
Advocate Jaymalya Bagchi from Calcutta said there was no legal problem, if any organisation identified itself as “police”.
“But the organisation will be prevented from registering itself under the Societies Registration Act. And if the organisation is not registered, it has no legal clearance,’’ Bagchi said.
Tamang said the party “has not yet thought anything on these lines”. (The Telegraph)