A day after Darjeeling and adjoining areas that witnessed sporadic clashes between thousands of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters and police, the areas remained tense on Friday even as a team of special auditors appointed by the Bengal Government to probe the finances of GJM-ruled Gorkhaland Territorial Authority reached the disturbed zone.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier decided to send six Finance Department officers to investigate the expenditure of Rs 2,000 crore allotted by the State Government to the GTA over the past five years. “The GTA has to place an account of the money it was given by the State Government for the development of the Hill area,” said Mamata, adding “law would take its own course if anyone is found deficient of discharging one’s responsibilities honestly.”
Mamata, who was holding a Cabinet meeting along with 30 other senior ministers in Darjeeling Raj Bhavan when the violent clashes and arsoning took place on Friday, said “no one who stoked violence will be spared. Everyone who was guilty will have to face the law.”
Mamata, who stayed back in Darjeeling, oversaw restoration of peace by the Army which was called out by a panicked administration prompting GJM chief Bimal Gurung to wonder whether the Hills were smiling as was often claimed by the Chief Minister.
“Finally she had to call out the Army and take help of the Centre. So it is a Central Rule in a roundabout manner. I fail to understand now how the Hills are smiling. Had it been smiling would the law and order situation go out of hand forcing the Government to call out Army,” said the GTA Chairman, who called himself the Chief Minister of the Hills.
The immediate trigger of Thursday’s violence was thought to be the alleged “forced imposition of Bengali on the people of Hills” after Mamata made it one of three must-read languages in the State alongside English and Hindi. The Chief Minister, however, subsequently said Bengali would be made optional in the Hills.
Meanwhile, even as Gurung threatened to raise the Gorkhaland movement afresh “if the State Government continues to oppress the people of the Hills,” about 30,000 tourists were still stranded in Darjeeling following a 12-hour bandh called by the GJM against “police atrocities”. The State Government, however, had made arrangements by providing additional buses which proved too little to cater to the large number of tourists, sources said.
Political observers, on the other hand, said Darjeeling violence was the result of Mamata’s “aggressive expansionist policy” which could be understood from the appointment of Special Auditors ahead of the GTA elections which would be due in a year’s time.
GJM seems to have felt alarmed at the “expansionist tendency of Banerjee who has banished the opposition from the plains and now trying to capture the Hills by victimising GJM by setting Special Auditors after them,” said BN Chakrabarty political analyst.