Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday warned the Centre against “playing with fire” by circuitously helping the pro-Gorkhaland Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
She was speaking in context of the recent talks between Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and GJM leader Roshan Giri in which the Centre agreed to hold tripartite dialogue featuring GJM, the State Government and the Centre to resolve the ongoing crisis in Darjeeling.
“There is a lakshmana Rekha to everything the Centre should remember and this before acting” Banerjee said reminding how the Prime Minister had assured her that the Centre would inform the State Government on its interactions with the GJM. “The Centre has its own area of functioning which it should not cross. It seems that there is a politics of vendetta being played here in Bengal,” she maintained.
“I am sorry to say that the Centre is indirectly stoking the Gorkhaland crisis and the Congress cannot absolve itself from the accusations that are being brought against each in this context,” Banerjee said, adding how her patience was brimming over. On the proposed tripartite meeting featuring the three sides, Banerjee said the State Government was not informed about any such proposal and neither was it intimated on Delhi’s talks with the GJM leadership.
Banerjee also warned the “parties and groups who are trying to disturb peace in Darjeeling” should stop doing so as the State Government was under an obligation to preserve the interests of the people of the Hills. All the three sub-divisions of Darjeeling district was witnessing a bandh-like situation for the past more than a month after the GJM started a movement for a separate Gorkhaland State in the wake of the Centre’s decision to create a separate State of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh. Already about GJM supporters including a number of GTA members have been arrested in Darjeeling.