A three-member delegation of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) met Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi here on Monday to formally submit their resignation letters from the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), the developmental board in the northern West Bengal hills.
"MlA from Darjeeling Amar Singh Rai, ex-GTA chairman Roshan lama and Deputy Chairman Rabindra lama were in Kolkata today to hand over their resignation letters to the Governor of West Bengal," Binay Tamang, GJM's Assistant General Secretary, told IANS.
Tamang said the delegation, led by Amar Singh Rai, also handed over the resignation letters of 43 GJM leaders, including party chief Bimal Gurung, who resigned en masse from the board on June 23.
"The other GTA member Satish Pokhrel, who is in judicial custody, had handed over the resignation letter to Roshan lama," he added.
The GJM, spearheading the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland in the Darjeeling hills, announced it would resign from the GTA over its differences with the Mamata Banerjee government.
The GJM chief, who had been in hiding since a police raid at his residence in Darjeeling's Patlebas locality on June 15, had resurfaced on Friday and vowed to burn the GTA Regulation Act documents before the public on June 27 as a symbolic protest against the board.
Even as Bengal administration stepped up police activities in Darjeeling hills, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha on Monday threatened to launch bigger stir if the Centre and the State Government did not pay heed to “our demand of a separate Gorkhaland.”
Threatening to take the movement to “its logical end” GJM youth wing chief Prakash Gurung said the party was keeping options open on steps like “self-immolation” and fast-until-death “to make the state see reasons.”
The Morcha would burn in public the copies of GTA agreement signed in 2011 after Mamata Banerjee came to power. “The party will burn the copies of the agreement” as a symbolic expression of its rejection of the projected instrument of peace in the Hills after a crucial meeting on June 29 where all the Hill outfits would converge to chalk out future plans: particularly in the face of growing food crisis and “apparent apathy of both the Centre and the State to solve the issue.”
The Centre, State and the GJM had signed the GTA accord to grant considerable autonomy to the Hill council whereby about 54 departments were to be transferred to the elected body.
However, GJM complained of continuous neglect on the part of the Chief Minister to implement the conditions mentioned in the Accord.
“Instead she in the name of development not only tried to divide the Hill population by creating multiple councils of different ethnic minorities but also implicated the Morcha leaders in false cases when they tried to raise their voices against her misrule. So there is no question of looking back to GTA once again. It is a closed chapter and we will not take part in the GTA elections. The people of Darjeeling will take nothing short of a separate State,” Gurung said.
adding people were preparing to make the “ultimate sacrifice.”
His statements came when senior IPS officers including IGP, SN Gupta on Monday led a route march in Darjeeling anticipating fresh trouble.
The people of Darjeeling were planning to “make the ultimate sacrifice through self-immolation and fast-until-death if our demand was not considered at the earliest” the Morcha leadership said even as a large posse of retired Gorkha soldiers took part in a silent procession in Darjeeling.
Though they would not utter a word, their family men said “the Centre has to look into the matter with full sympathy. We have nothing to with the Bengal Government or Mamata Banerjee who has perpetrated a reign of terror in Darjeeling.”
While the Morcha gave a 12-hour relaxation to the indefinite bandh that reached its 12th day on Monday on the occasion of Eid, large numbers of people were seen on the roads frantically looking for food. “Yes our stocks have exhausted and we have almost nothing to eat. But still we want Gorkhaland,” an old man said matter of factly while trying to run after a mini-truck laden with vegetables sent by the Morcha to distribute food items.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated development Mamata Banerjee came down heavily on the Narendra Modi Government for “unleashing bands of tormentors on the streets who are killing innocent people in the name of religion.
Addressing an Eid gathering at the historic Red Road in Kolkata Banerjee said “there is an effort to divide the people of the country for narrow political interests. But we all know that strength rests in unity and not division. So we will keep united and not let people create trouble.”