The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) leadership has threatened to go in for an agitation if its demand for bringing parts of the Dooars and Terai in the plains of north Bengal within the jurisdiction of the interim administrative arrangement proposed by it for Darjeeling district and its contiguous areas is not met.
“We shall go in for an agitation if the territorial jurisdiction of the proposed regional authority is confined only to the three hill sub-divisions of Darjeeling district”, Roshan Giri, GJM general secretary, told The Hindu over telephone from Darjeeling district on Thursday.
The future of the GJM's proposal for the interim “regional authority” is expected to be discussed at the tripartite talks to be held at the bureaucratic level in New Delhi on May 11. Besides a GJM delegation, officials of the Union Home Ministry and the West Bengal government will be attending.
The talks are being viewed as precursor to another round of political level discussions slated for later in the month.
Though the West Bengal government is amenable to the idea of an alternative administrative set-up with greater powers than what the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) was invested with it is opposed to the jurisdiction of such a body extending beyond the three hill-subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong. It also favours constitutional status to such a set-up.
The issue of jurisdiction is of greater importance to the GJM leadership presently than the powers it demands for the interim set-up, GJM sources said.
While the West Bengal government has ruled out any bifurcation of the State for the creation of a separate “Gorkhaland,” State regional parties in the Darjeeling hills like the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League and the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists have been increasingly strident in their criticism of the GJM.
According to them, it is allegedly settling for a “regional authority” rather than pursuing its professed agenda for a separate State.
