In an apparent bid to step up pressure, both on the Centre and the State Governments, for an early solution to the Darjeeling imbroglio the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) once again brought out a toddlers rally on Monday calling upon the powers that be to “consider the children’s demands for a Gorkhaland State where they will be safe and secure.”
On why was there a need to push children in the fore front of a political movement senior GJM leader Roshan Giri said, “this is a message to the Centre from the children that they do not feel safe in Bengal and they need to be given a State of their own where they will feel safe and secure.”
The children’s future was in Gorkhaland and nowhere else, he said wondering “where is the harm for the Centre to open a dialogue on a new Gorkhaland State.” If there could be Telengana, a Jharkhand, a Chhattisgarh and an Uttarkhand then why could not there be a Gorkhaland, he asked saying “Ours is the oldest such movement in the country which should be respected by the Centre.”
On whether his party would not talk to the State Government he said “there is no point talking to the State Government because it has no power of creating a new State. Whatever is to be done has to be done by the Centre.”
The GJM leader said the Centre had “kept silent after the talks I had with the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in early June. The people of the region are getting restless. They do not want to be betrayed by the main stream political parties,” be it BJP or Congress or Trinamool or the left.
“It was in the interest of the stability of the region that demand for Gorkhaland should be considered,” he said rejecting “allegations” that the GJM supporters were fomenting violence by torching government properties.
“GJM does not believe in violence and our men are carrying out the movement in non-violent manner,” he said even as police vehicle was on Sunday torched by unidentified assailants at a police outpost off Darjeeling town.
“They are damaging goverment properties, torching BDO and panchayat offices, police vehicles and not even sparing public buses. People are watching all these and more. law will take its own course,” said State Minister in charge of Darjeeling and North Bengal Gautam Deb.