Gurung fears Kishenji-like fate
Within hours of being declared ‘absconder’ in a 2010 murder case Gorkha Janmukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung on Tuesday lashed out at Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her “vindictive attitude” and claimed he had “seen many political parties but not as degraded an outfit as the Trinamool Congress.”
Gurung who repeated his earlier apprehensions of “meeting a mysterious fate like Kishenji” the top Maoists leader who was gunned down by the CRPF in an encounter in 2011 claimed “the politically intolerant and extremely corrupt party” that the Trinamool Congress was “they are after our lives as we have decided to support the BJP in the lok Sabha elections.
Gurung’s statement came almost in tandem with about five hundred families from Bijonbari and other areas in Darjeeling joining the GJM back from Trinamool Congress.
The chemistry between the GJM and the Trinamool had deteriorated after Mamata Banerjee “unanimously named Baichung Bhutia” the former India football captain as her party’s nominee from Darjeeling “without consulting the GJM which has three MlAs.”
A bevy of top Gorkha leaders were facing charges in the murder of Madan Tamang the then All India Gorkha league president who was hacked to death in broad day light in 1010. The anticipatory bails of Gurung and his wife Asha had been rejected following which the police had pasted “lookout notice” in front of their residences apparently in a bid to mount pressure on the top Gorkha leadership ahead of the elections.
Though the police were not arresting GJM leaders for now fearing a sympathy wave the Gorkha leadership feel “the unpredictable methods” that the Chief Minister was generally prone to adopt “we might be arrested at a crucial juncture so that there is a leadership crisis in our party and our organisational machinery go haywire.”
With the Government vehemently opposing the bail plea of the GJM leaders and the way the administration lifted security cover of Gurung who is also the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration chairman the GJM president said “some people might hand me down a fate similar to that of Kishenji” adding “I have never seen a political party so lousy and degenerated as the Trinamool Congress which is entirely steeped in corruption.”
He added the people of the Hills were ready to fight “come what may as we as the citizens of this country have the right to choose the political party of our choice. The people have chosen BJP for that purpose like the way had in the 2009 elections.”