GJM to march to Kolkata demanding separate state

IN A throwback to over two decades ago, the hills of Darjeeling, quaintly named the Queen of the hills by the British has again begun to seethe. The mid-eighties saw violence in support of a separate state of Gorkhaland restricted to the hill region where over 300 people died. Today, another generation of activists is seeking to bring the same demand to the capital of West Bengal, Kolkata.

The fledgling Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) born six months ago, which wrested control of the Darjeeling hills and the future of the hill people from the hands of Subhas Ghising, the supremo of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), is bent on bringing the agitation for a separate state at the doorstep of the Left Front government which fought tooth and nail to stop Darjeeling from seceding in the mid-eighties.

The Morcha is planning to use 10,000 handpicked people from the three hill subdivisions and start a long march to Writers' Buildings, the state secretariat on May 7. The activists will walk all the way to the seat of the Bengal government to lay bare its demand.

The Morcha wants to tell the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and people of Bengal about the injustice meted out to former servicemen who have spent their lives guarding the country and the burning desire for a separate state they can call their own, Bimal Gurung, Morcha president told a huge crowd in Darjeeling yesterday, the local media reported.

Much before the planned march to the capital of the state the Morcha has called for an indefinite shut down of all government establishments, both central and state in the Darjeeling hills as of April 14. Morcha leaders have assured tourists that they would not be inconvenienced because the shut down would only in government offices. Hotels, private establishments, municipalities and banks will be kept out of the purview of the shut down.

It is a long drawn programme that the Morcha has in mind, albeit different from the tactics used by Ghisingh in his heydays when indefinite bands and violence were his only weapons. The Morcha is mobilizing school students to take part in the rally in Darjeeling on April 11. On April 15 school teachers will stage a rally. On April 17 minority communities would take out a rally in the hill town.

There was a 24-hour bandh in the hills from Thursday to Friday morning in protest against police action on ex-servicemen from Darjeeling during a rally in Siliguri on Wednesday. The Morcha has demanded an inquiry into the police lathi charge on its rallyists.

Meanwhile the man who has earned the wrath of the Morcha the most urban development minister Ashok Bhattacharjee appealed to the agitating hill leaders to come to the negotiating table both with the Centre and the state. He said agitations and violence would not solve problems and pointed out that the state chief minister was always ready for a dialogue. The minister has become persona non grata in Darjeeling because he called the Morcha leaders "outsiders". The minister was elected from North Bengal and is in charge of CPI (M) affairs in the hill district. (merinews)