The Union government’s decision on Tuesday to declare Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) a banned outfit has come as a surprise to many political observers in the State. Formed in the early 1990’s, KLO’s main demand was the carving out a separate State from the districts of north Bengal and lower Assam.
But of late, the KLO has been concentrating more on identity issues including the recognition of their language, said Vaskar Nandy, a CPI (ML) activist, who supports certain demands of KLO related to their language and identity.
“There have been no major subversive activities by the KLO in West Bengal over the past few years. I fail to understand why the KLO has been banned by the Centre,” he told The Hindu.
Mr Nandy said that barring a brief period in late 1990’s, the KLO has hardly been active. Between December 2013 and January 2014, there was a flush out operation where large numbers of KLO operatives were killed and arrested from there camps on the India- Bhutan border.
In West Bengal, the police have always treated them as a terrorist group. In December 2013, a blast near Jalpaiguri district claimed five lives. Though the West Bengal police claimed that the KLO was behind the blast, the organisation denied it.
What the members of the KLO are demanding now is more to with their identity rather than a separate State, he said. The CPI( ML) activist, however, said that the KLO is more active in lower Assam than West Bengal, and inputs from the Assam government may have triggered the move by the Centre.
When The Hindu spoke to Mrinal Roy, a member of KLO who had surrendered, he said that he is part of a relay hunger strike demanding the recognition of Rajbanshi language of the Kamptapuri people. “We are organising a relay hunger strike at Mainagudi in the Jalpaigudi district,” he said
Earlier this year in February, the West Bengal police arrested Tom Adhikary alias Joydev Roy, the vice-chairman of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO). He was arrested from a Bhutan camp in 2003, but was acquitted in 2012.
