Betraying a mellowed countenance in the face of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s iron fist Gorkha Janmukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung has once again revived the dialogue option more than anything else to resolve the Gorkhaland tangle.
The GJM chief, who had till a few weeks ago refused to talk to the State Government and even issued veiled threats of Gorkha people using “other options” to get their demand for a separate State, heard literally begged for a dialogue as “I want no violence in the name of Gorkhaland.”
“Now the agitation will be done through dialogue” he wrote on the Facebook insisting dialogue was the “only way we can solve the problem of the Hills.”
Curiously he had earlier said that his party “has other options to make the Government understand our demands.” He had also said that if the State did not stop “oppression on our workers then we will be forced to consider other option” adding “if things go on like this we will demand something else and not a State.”
There was no comment from the Government side after Gurung’s Monday turnaround.
Gurung who had got his party to sign the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Accord with the Centre and the new State Government led by Mamata Banerjee in 2011 revived the demand for a separate Gorkhaland State in July — through a prolonged agitation including bandhs — after Delhi decided to create a new Telangana State.
Though the GJM chief resigned from the chairmanship of the GTA council and refused to talk with the State Government “as there is no point with the State because only the Centre can give a new State” his pressure tactic tended to wilt in the face of Banerjee’s blood and iron policy.
The Chief Minister — who got her party Trinamool Congress to engineer defection in the GJM ranks with a host of their members joining the ruling outfit particularly in the lower regions of Darjeeling — also pumped in Central forces in the Hills making preventive arrests.
Disregarding the swelling crowds on the streets and continuous bandh the Chief Minister got a galaxy of Gurung’s top advisors including senior leader Benoy Tamang arrested.
The policy tended to work even as Gurung started feeling the heat from both the Government and the people a section of which reportedly started questioning the efficacy of the prolonged bandh politics crippling the regions tourism economy.
Gurung on Monday iterated that his decision to opt for dialogue did not tantamount to a climb-down as “I had never advocated violence or any kind of disruptive politics.”
He wrote on the Facebook that the pro-Gorkhaland agitation would be “Delhi-oriented” from December when “a lakh Gorkha people will go to Delhi and create pressure for Gorkhaland.”
The leader however would not comment on reported Central proposal for tripartite talks in October.
However, party sources said Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had indeed offered such talks sooner than later.