BJP, the new X-factor in West Bengal

Rajat Roy / Kolkata
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the otherwise lightweight party in the highly polarised political scenario in West Bengal, is gradually becoming the X-factor in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. After the first phase of polls in the state on April 30, leaders of the ruling CPI(M) had conceded that BJP candidate Jaswant Singh had a clear edge in Darjeeling over their own candidate, Jibesh Sarkar. Now, these CPI(M) leaders are pinning their hope on the BJP to ensure Left victory in at least three seats — Krishnanagar, Dum Dum and Alipurduar.

Unlike the previous two occasions when it had formed alliance with the Trinamool Congress, this time, the BJP is fighting the ongoing general elections alone in the state.

According to the Left, if the BJP is able to retain a considerable share of opposition votes in these areas, it would ensure a smooth passage for the Left candidates. The CPI(M) is so concerned that some of its leaders like Shyamal Chakrabarty and Amitava Nandy were seen enquiring from BJP candidates why they were not being able to put up a good show in Dum Dum and North Kolkata.

In Alipurduar in 2004, the BJP lost to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a Left Front constituent. But the combined Opposition vote was more than what the Left got there. Earlier in 1996, it got merely 7.95 per cent of the votes in the state when it fought alone.

To add to its worries this time, a number of tribal voters in Alipurduar boycotted the poll on April 30 in response to the call given by the Adivasi Vikash Parishad. The tribals had traditionally supported the Left. So, if the BJP fails to retain its votes there, Alipurduar might turn out to be a close contest this time.

In 1999, the BJP’s Tapan Sikdar and Satyabrata Mukherjee won from Dum Dum and Krishnanagar, respectively, and subsequently became ministers in the NDA government. But in the 2004 elections, they lost to CPI(M) candidates.

So, this time, all eyes are on Krishnanagar, Dum Dum and Alipurduar to see if the BJP turns out as the crucial factor in deciding the fate of these seats.

Previous results show that the BJP, when it fought alone in the state, never got more than 10 per cent of votes. But with the support from the Trinamool, Mukherjee got 43.82 per cent votes in Krishnanagar in 1999, followed by 40.54 per cent votes in 2004.

The Left is concerned because in 2004 the total opposition vote in Krishnanagar was at least 75,000 votes more than what it got. In 1996, when the BJP last fought this seat on its own, it got only 8.02 per cent votes, or 71,000 votes in absolute terms. Of course, Mukherjee is very popular in this area as he did a lot for his constituency when he was a minister in the NDA government.

This time, Mukherjee, an eminent barrister from Krishnanagar, has built his campaign on his personal charisma. On April 30, senior BJP leader L K Advani addressed a huge rally in Krishnanagar in support of Mukherjee. Only two days later, Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya went there to campaign for his party’s candidate, the sitting MP Jyotirmoyee Sikdar. Compared to Advani’s rally, that was a very poor show.

On the other hand, Tapas Pal, the Tollywood actor and Trinamool candidate, has other worries. Shankar Singh, the local Congress heavyweight, had withdrawn completely from the campaign, threatening to subvert his election.

But, how much of the opposition votes would he be able to retain after the Trinamool left the BJP and formed an electoral alliance with the Congress? In last year’s panchayat elections, the Opposition gained a lot in this district, indicating a steady erosion in the Left vote bank.

People in Krishnanagar have no straight answer to that. According to a veteran doctor of the town, “Satyabrata Mukherjee is very much in the race.” Senior CPI(M) leaders are hopeful that the BJP candidate would be able to make a serious dent in the Opposition vote to spoil the chance of the Trinamool candidate.

If the personality factor of the BJP candidate in Krishnanagar is crucial to the outcome of the vote there, in Dum Dum it is just the opposite. After getting marginalised in the intra-party squabbles, Tapan Sikdar left the BJP three years back and joined Uma Bharti. Recently, he returned to the party and was nominated to contest from Dum Dum. The present MP from Dum Dum, the CPI(M)’s Amitava Nandy, is worried that Sikdar’s campaign is not picking up at all. In an informal chat, Nandy recently asked Sikdar about it. Sikdar’s blunt reply was, “What can I do? I joined the party only three months back. So, it is difficult to motivate my party workers. Also, the paucity of fund is a serious concern.”

In 2004, the BJP got nearly 42 per cent vote in Dum Dum against the CPI(M)’s 49.6 per cent, while the Congress managed 6 per cent. But in the last panchayat elections, the CPI(M) lost a major share of seats in two lower tiers of the three-tier panchayat system. So, Nandy has valid reason to be worried. To add to his worries, his party leaders in the district are not cooperative.

The party has ordered his bete noir, Subhash Chakrabarty, the most influential leader in the district, out of the district to East Medinipur to control the extent of the damage due to infighting in the party. That’s why he was desperate to see the BJP did sufficiently well to make dent in the Opposition vote bank.

But the CPI(M)’s campaign against the BJP for endorsing the Gorkha agitation in Darjeeling hills is now going against its interest.

This has put the BJP candidates on the defensive in the plains of Bengal. After touring a number of districts in south Bengal, Shamik Bhattacharya, a state BJP leader, feels there are indications that a shifting of support is taking place at the ground level.

A source close to senior RSS leaders in the state disclosed that they would in all likelihood transfer their vote to the main opposition, the Trinamool. If that happens across the party, the Left would have reasons to be concerned.

Post-poll ethnic strife looms over Dooars

4 May 2009, 0249 hrs IST, Keshav Pradhan, TNN

Sunday’s flare-up between Nepalis and Bengali Muslims at Jaigaon in the Dooars has brought into sharp focus how the politicization of ethnic issues by both pro-and anti-Left forces has turned north Bengal into the country’s newest flashpoint. The situation may worsen after Lok Sabha election results are announced on May 16. There are many reasons for this. The practice of playing one ethnic or linguistic group against another gained momentum in early 2008 when Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) revived the Gorkhaland movement and the Left opposed it. It became more blatant after BJP challenged the might of CPM, RSP and Forward Bloc in the elections, riding piggyback on pro-Gorkhaland and Kamtapur forces. Hemmed in by Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Assam, Sikkim and Bihar, the region, which military strategists call Chicken’s Neck, has a mixed population of Nepalis, Adivasis, Bengalis, Rajbanshis and north Indians. After the Nepalis, Rajbanshis are the second ethnic group which is fighting for a separate Kamtapur state comprising six north Bengal districts. Adivasis, who dominate most of the 199 tea gardens in the Dooars and the Terai, want an autonomous council under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The violence at Jaigaon, located close to the Bhutanese town of Phuentsholing, erupted over two unrelated cases of murder, that of a Nepali and a Muslim boy. In no time, it took a communal colour. There was an undercurrent of tension in the Dooars for quite some time. It is the outcome of the fast-growing mistrust and suspicion between Nepalis and non-Nepalis over the Gorkhaland issue. Both GJM and the Left are responsible for this divide. GJM has rubbed the plains people the wrong way by seeking to include the Dooars and the Terai where Nepalis are in a minority in its proposed Gorkhaland. The Left, on the other hand, has created a kind of fear psychosis among non-Nepalis, especially Bengalis, by claiming that they all will have to quit the region in case Gorkhaland becomes a reality. Lately, the growing assertiveness among Adivasis has added a new dimension to the region’s ethnic politics. In February, the tribals, under the leadership of Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikash Parishad (ABAVP), hit the headlines after they took up arms to resist GJM’s campaign in the Dooars. Some radical Bengali organisations backed the Adivasis to the hilt. All this while, RSP and CPM remained quite, allowing ABAVP to fight their battle against GJM. In the process, they lost a vast majority of Adivasi and Nepal tea workers to ABAVP and GJM. In the late Nineties, a huge chunk of Nepali CPM cadres from the Dooars had joined the Maoist-run Akhil Bharatiya Nepali Ekta Sangh, banned since 2001, over the alleged recruitment of Bengali teachers for Nepali medium schools. ABAVP has added more to the Left’s woes by boycotting the elections in support of its four-point charter of demands, which include reopening of closed gardens and formation of an autonomous council for Adivasis. This has made the fate of Left candidates in the Darjeeling, Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri constituencies uncertain. The boycott issue has led to fears about a possible a fratricidal war between Adivasis loyal to ABAVP and those close to the Left. Soon after the polls, ABAVP activists attacked fellow Adivasis in Palasbari and Telepara gardens for ignoring their boycott call. In the Eighties, about 250 Nepali CPM cadres were killed and over 30,000 uprooted from their homes for several years after they picked up arms to oppose Subash Ghisingh’s Gorkhaland stir in the hills. Things look equally uncertain for Nepalis and other non-Adivasis, who turn out in heavy numbers to cast their votes in the Dooars. In February, Adivasis had attacked Nepalis in Nagrakata, Madarihat, Birpara, Banarhat and Binnaguri after thousands of GJM supporters from the hills tried to march into the Dooars. Most Bengali-dominated urban settlements in the Dooars are surrounded by tea gardens and forest villages inhabited by Adivasis and Nepalis. Last year, GJM workers and Bengalis had clashed with each other at Kalchini, Hamiltonganj, Birpara and Mal Bazar. There is an undercurrent of tension in the foothills of Darjeeling district, the epicentre of the Gorkhaland movement. Bengali-Nepali ties began to worsen in the plains of Darjeeling district after radical Bengali organisations like Bangla O Bangla Bhasha Bachao Samiti and Aamra Bangali, who call Nepalis “foreigners”, opposed the Left Front government’s decision to give autonomy to Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule in 2006. Tension between the two communities has grown further since early 2008 when GJM claimed Siliguri as a part of its proposed Gorkhaland. With virtually no support base in the hills, CPM remained silent when activists of radical Bengali organisations attacked Nepalis in plains settlements like Bagdogra, Kadamtala, Matigara and parts of Siliguri town in June last. This gave GJM a chance to accuse CPM of using radical elements to “terrorise” Nepalis. To checkmate the Left, the Gorkha party has now joined hands with Kamtapur Progressive Party, a Rajbanshi organisation. It is also trying to maintain contact with ABAVP and former parliamentarian from Alipurduar, Joachim Buxla, who left RSP after he was denied renomination for the just concluded polls. Adding more to the ethnic cauldron, BJP nominee from Darjeeling Jaswant Singh and NCP leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma have lately thrown their weight behind pro-Gorkhaland and Kamtapur activists. On the back foot, the Left has fallen back upon the emotive slogan of “Resist Banga Bhanga,’ instead of the magic of Brand Buddha, to fight against whom it calls separatist forces.”

Picture of the day

Dangerous politics

Shikha Mukerjee DNA

In line with its commitment to chopping up the larger Indian states into bite-size pieces for reasons that range from respect for people with separate identities and recognition of their rights to administrative convenience, the BJP has nominated former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh to contest the Darjeeling seat in West Bengal.

By doing so, the BJP has packaged the dangerously fissiparous demand for a separate Gorkhaland as a demand with merit, legitimacy and right.

For the BJP it would appear that the price of a seat in the Marxist bastion of West Bengal would be, if won, a politically septic focus for the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM). This would be a low cost initiative with little risk.

Given that the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) was auctioning its support to whichever party agreed to advance its agenda of carving out a separate state of Gorkhaland in the three hill subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong, Kalimpong and in the Dooars including Siliguri city, the BJP can claim its bid was successful and that it had negotiated a bargain. Officially the BJP has not committed itself via its manifesto to pitching for a separate Gorkhaland state. Its candidate, Jaswant Singh has, albeit wrapping the bitter message in meaningless reassurances.

Encouraging ambitions of a separate Gorkhaland state, albeit technically within the framework of the Indian Constitution, may not seem to be dangerous. It could be dressed up to sound sympathetic to the quest for Gorkha identity and esteem that began with the movement launched by Subas Ghisingh’s Gorkha National Liberation Front.

While the issue of whether the bid for a separate Gorkhaland is a simple demand of hill people for respect and identity can be discussed later, what does need to be fore-grounded is the link between the idea of a separate Gorkhaland and India’s security.

The tacit support to the bid for a separate Gorkhaland nails BJP’s blinkered, if not distorted vision, on how it would fulfil its campaign promises of meeting terrorism from across the border with a muscular capability to protect India and improve the security environment. Having declared that the rival Congress is weak and irresponsible about handling the threat to security posed by terrorism, it is bizarre to note that the BJP has taken a soft position on Gorkhaland.

There is no question that early Nepali settlers in the Darjeeling area deserve a separate identity to distinguish them from citizens of Nepal who later migrated to India in search of livelihood. That demand for a different identity was met through the Gorkha Hill Council accord that recognised Gorkhas as people who “belonged” to the hill areas of Darjeeling, distinct from the Nepalis who migrated there and to other corners of India in search of work.

The demand for a separate Gorkhaland is, however, not about lebensraum; it has to be juxtaposed against the issue of security, including defeating terrorism. The BJP ought to have known its geography of India rather better; the demand for Gorkhaland would jeopardise that slender land connection described as “Chicken’s Neck” between the rest of India and the Northeast of the country.

The area that GJM has claimed for Gorkhaland includes sensitive places like the Sukna forest where the 33 Corps of the Eastern Command is stationed, crucial for defending India’s borders in the Eastern Himalayas where China is a looming sometimes threatening presence.

Any blockages within the Chicken’s Neck would snap the link between the rest of the country and Sikkim, it would hamper movement in and out of Bhutan towards which India has treaty obligations and it would isolate an area where according to Indian intelligence ISI, Le-T, HuJI terror networks have been operational. It may be pointed out that it is in India’s security interest to remain alert as there are strong suspicions of a connect between terror networks and insurgents in the Northeast and links between Maoists and insurgents as well.

In other words, the foothills of Darjeeling are not peaceful, quaint places for “tea” tourists. That Siliguri has been a staging post for ISI operatives, who have used it to move in and out of India via Nepal should have alerted the BJP to the risk of irresponsibly encouraging GJM.

That there have always been small and vocal groups raising a demand for “Greater Nepal” where connection via the now deposed monarchy would serve as adhesive is known to BJP.To convert Darjeeling into an “innocent political fishing expedition” by lining up with the openly divisive Gorkha Janamukti Morcha is to refuse to acknowledge the rather more sinister and serious implications of promoting the idea of smaller states in a place where India’s borders are open to Nepal, China, Bangladesh and last but not least Bhutan through which terrorists, arms and information is trafficked.

 

 

Rocky road to Darjeeling

The tip of Mt Kanchenjunga turns crimson as the last rays of the sun touch upon the three blade-shaped spurs of Tindharia, around which the legend

of labour leader Sagina Mahato is woven. “It’s our final battle. Vote for Jaswant Singh,” a GJM activist campaigns for a candidate who does not belong to his party at this railway township, about 30 km south of Kurseong.

Considering its unique electorate composition and issues, Darjeeling has always thrown up surprises in elections. This time, it promises to have an even more interesting and suspenseful Lok Sabha poll because of various other new factors.

Some of them are: BJP’s decision to fight the polls for the pro-Gorkhaland GJM in proxy, presence of the saffron party’s high-profile candidate Jaswant Singh, the inability of CPM and chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to campaign anywhere in the constituency, flight of former Gorkha strongman Subash Ghisingh from Darjeeling and support of Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists (CPRM) to BJP.

What has queered the pitch for Congress which had won the seat in 2004 and CPM is BJP’s decision to fight from Darjeeling, riding piggyback on GJM. The saffron party has a negligible presence in the region.

“BJP is an opportunistic party. The people of the constituency will reject it,” says CPM candidate Jibesh Sarkar. “Our position is strong because we stand for peace and unity,” he adds.

The constituency has seven Assembly segments, of which three are in the Hills and four in the plains. Marxists have a strong base in the plains segments of Siliguri, Phansidewa, Matigara-Naxalbari and Chopra. The hill Assembly seats of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong comprise about 48% of the over 12-lakh strong electorate. Currently, GJM holds total sway over them as well as the foothills that have a sizeable Nepali population.

Keeping this in mind, both GJM and BJP are confident of victory. Both have focused on the Gorkhaland issue. Singh has promised to take the Gorkhas’ “101-year-old demand” to “Delhi and beyond”. Besides, he has also roped in Kamtapur Progressive Party by sympathizing with its demand for a separate state for Rajbanshis, who live in huge numbers in North Bengal.

Despite all this, CPM and Congress regard each other as main rivals. Congress nominee Dawa Narbula, who bagged the seat with GNLF support last time, projects himself as the only “hill candidate”. He calls Singh “an outsider who will be of no help to the hill people”. Apart from the hill votes, he is banking on Congress’s alliance with Trinamool. In 2004, he had defeated his nearest challenger Mani Thapa (CPM) by over a lakh votes.

This time, CPM feels that any division of hill votes between BJP and Congress will go to its advantage. It also expects overwhelming support from voters in the plains who are against the Gorkhaland demand.

Given GJM’s stranglehold over the Hills, Marxist leaders find it difficult to campaign in Nepali areas. “GJM has not allowed us to canvass in the Hills. We have taken it up with the Election Commission,” says urban development minister and CPM leader Asok Bhattacharya. The chief minister, who hasn’t been able to set foot in the Hills since GJM’s rise in October 2007, has described the situation there as “not conducive to the polls”. He has also expressed concern over GJM raising a police wing called Gorkhaland Personnel.

Another factor that may trouble the Left is Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikash Parishad (ABAVP)’s decision to boycott the elections in support of its various demands, including an autonomous council under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Adivasis dominate almost all 46 tea gardens in the plains of Darjeeling.

Confident of Citu’s influence over these workers, Bhattacharya, however, says, “The boycott will not have any impact in our district.” In contrast, ABAVP has been tough with RSP in the Dooars in neighbouring Jalpaiguri district, which has 153 tea estates.

In the Hills, GJM’s decision to back BJP has landed other pro-Gorkhaland parties in a spot. CPRM, which broke away from CPM in 1996 over the statehood question, has agreed to campaign for Singh. “Our support is for Gorkhaland, our common goal,” explains CPRM central committee member D S Bomzan.

On the other hand, Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL) has not taken kindly to GJM’s decision to field “an outsider”. “We have appealed for conscience voting,” says ABGL chief Madan Tamang.

But the biggest surprise has come from Gorkha National Liberation Front chief Subash Ghisingh, who has been living in Jalpaiguri following his banishment from the Hills by GJM last year. His party has decided to boycott the elections seeking Schedule Tribe status for all Nepali ethnic groups. This, observers claim, may keep anti-GJM (read anti-BJP) voters away from the polls. But an unforgiving GJM says, “Ghisingh has spoilt the chances of his return to the Hills.” Smaller parties, such as CPI (ML)-Liberation, BSP and Aamra Bangali have fielded their own candidates.

Devoid of any national issues, Darjeeling is set to go to the polls high on emotion. Voters in the plains and Hills will certainly go different ways, keeping their dispute alive for a long time to come.

Yechury campaign in Darjeeling today

Statesman News Service
SILIGURI, April 20: CPI-M politburo member Mr Sitaram Yechury will address a poll rally at Chowk Bazar in Darjeeling tomorrow morning in support of the party candidate Mr Jibesh Sarkar.
This is will be the first public rally in the Hills by any major CPI-M leader since the demand for Gorkhaland resurfaced in Darjeeling almost one and half years back. Keeping in mind the political hostility that persists between the Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha (GJMM) and the CPI-M, the district administration has made elaborate security arrangements for Mr Yechury.
“The CPI-M leader would be escorted to the meeting venue from Siliguri in a convoy led by a DSP, while an executive magistrate too would accompany them,” the SP Darjeeling, Mr Mr Rahul Srivastava said. Besides this, necessary security deployments are being facilitated at the Chowk Bazar meeting venue and additional force would be on standby at the Sadar police station, the SP added.
Darjeeling DM and returning officer Mr Surendra Gupta too have assured adequate security measures for the meeting.
Meanwhile, Mr Yechury, while adressing a rally at Malbazaar and Chalsa in support of the Jalpaiguri CPI-M candidate Mr Mahendra Roy, said that his party would never allow a division of West Bengal to carve out Gorkhaland. “My party is ideologically opposed to formation of smaller states,” he said.

Trinamul-Cong for strong fight
The Darjeeling district Youth Congress and the Trinamul Youth Congress activists appear determined to make the CPI-M run for its money in the coming Parliamentary election in the Darjeeling constituency. “We would ensure this time that the ruling party does not get away with the electoral irregularities like booth jamming, false voting and intimidation of the voters it is used to practicing in polls,” said the district Youth Congress and the Trinamul Youth congress presidents Mr Sujay Ghattak and Mr Madan Bhattacharya today.

Gorkhaland-type demand echoes in T’pura

The Telegraph

Agartala, April 13 (The Telegraph): The BJP’s support for separate Gorkhaland seems to have opened a Pandora’s box with the demand for a separate state encompassing the entire Autonomous District Council (ADC) areas in Tripura snowballing into a major issue in the election campaign for the state’s two Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP in Tripura had formed an alliance with the National Conference of Tripura (NCT) before announcing its candidate. State NCT chief and former MLA Animesh Debbarma, who commands a following among the state’s tribal youths, elicited an assurance from the state BJP leadership and the party’s central observer that at the national level BJP would support the NCT’s longstanding demand for a separate state based on the ADC areas which cover 68.10 per cent of the state’s geographical territory.
In spite of squeamishness from a section of the state BJP leadership, Debbarma had told a joint news conference: “The purpose of giving autonomy to the tribals through ADC has failed because of non co-operation from successive state governments and now the lone option left for tribals is a separate state.”
Debbarma’s statement did not create a stir because, for all his personal popularity, his party lacks a proper political base. But the issue has heated up over the past week with recently revived Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) continuing a campaign in tribal-dominated areas in favour of a separate state based on ADC.
IPFT candidates Benoy Debbarma in West Tripura and Mebar Kumar Jamatya in East Tripura have touched a raw nerve among the tribals. The IPFT had been formed in 1997 with alleged clandestine links with banned NLFT militants. There was a furore in state politics in 2000 when the IPFT, backed to the hilt by the NLFT, came to power in ADC, defeating the Left Front through the NLFT’s rigging at gun point.
The party then merged with the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity in 2002 to form the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) but an underlying tension involving erstwhile leaders of the IPFT and the TUJS always remained a thorn in the INPT. Last month, the erstwhile IPFT leaders had broken away from the INPT and revived the old entity with the demand for a separate state for tribals based on the ADC areas.
The demand and campaign on the issue by the IPFT has triggered a controversy as PCC president Samir Ranjan Barman has dismissed the demand as “totally unrealistic and impossible”. CPM state secretary Bijan Dhar has also firmly opposed the demand saying “we strongly oppose this, we want further empowerment of the ADC but not a new state which is impossible within Tripura’s small geographical limits”.

 

BJP supports NCT’s demand 

 

Agartala, April 13 (UNI): After supporting the demand of Gorkhaland carved out of the West Bengal, the BJP has accepted a similar stance of its tribal ally National Conference of Tripura(NCT) for a separate state encompassing the entire Autonomous District Council(ADC). Though both ruling CPI(M) in Tripura and opposition Congress were opposed to the demand of a new state by cutting Tripura, the BJP had assured NCT of considering the issue of more power to the ADC if their government came to power at the Centre after the election.
NCT chief and former MLA Animesh Debbarma, who commands a following among the state’s tribal youths, elicited an assurance from the state BJP leadership and the party’s central observer that the party would support NCT’s longstanding demand for a separate state based on the ADC areas which cover 68.10 per cent of the state’s geographical territory. 

BJP for creation of smaller states

Apropos the newsreport “BJP for creation of smaller states” ( 11 April), Mr. Jaswant Singh, the BJP candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, is of the view that the demand for a separate state is “constitutional”. But Mr. Singh should have been aware that the tactics adopted by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha to fulfill its demand is absolutely unconstitutional, illegal and violent. By defacing ‘ West Bengal ‘ from the Government office signboards and inscribing ‘ Gorkhaland’  on them, the agitators have made a direct assault on the Constitution. By replacing ‘ WB’ on the number plates of vehicles with ‘ GL’, they are challenging the legal procedures of the State. Also, the agitators do not hesitate to take the law into their own hands and physically assault those wh dare to defy their diktat. The GJM is also so heartless that it barred Subhas Ghising from entering the hills for last rites of his wife, after she passed away in Siliguri. Far from condemning this muscle-flexing of the GJM, Mr. Jaswant Singh has practically endorsed it. By providing moral support to the GJM, the BJP — self-declared guardian of nationalism — is not only encouraging fragmentation of West Bengal, it is also providing boost to a set of people who are basically encroachers from alien country named Nepal. If the GJM succeeds in its mission of carving out a seperate state with the help of BJP , then more and more Nepali nationals will intrude and settle in the whole of North Bengal, thanks to the porous border, and demand those areas also to be included in Gorkhaland. It is high time the indigenous Bengalis of Siliguri,  the Lepchas and the Bhutias — the real sons of the Hills — rise to the occasion and see to it that the unholy nexus between the GJM and the BJP be snubbed in the bud, thereby preventing the state from disintegration by the Nepali migrants. It is extremely unfortunate that a party of national importance like BJP, in order to garner votes, has stooped to such a pathetic extent that it feels no qualms in fomenting ethnic tensions in North Bengal and endangering the security of the nation, given the region’s sensitive borders with neighbouring China, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Kajal Chatterjee

Gorkhaland on agenda: Jaswant

SILIGURI, April 14: Throwing circumspection to the winds, the BJP veteran and candidate for the Darjeeling constituency in the Lok Sabha polls Mr Jaswant Singh (SNS photo right) today said in Siliguri that if voted to power, his party would go the whole hog to carve out a Gorkhaland state out of West Bengal. “There is no room for ambiguity on this front as far as the BJP election manifesto is concerned,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state urban development minister and a senior CPI-M leader Mr Asok Bhattacharya said apprehension prevailed in Darjeeling district that the BJP would attempt to purchase votes with notes on the lines of the recent Barmer incident in Rajasthan.
Taking an explicit stand on the emotive Gorkhaland issue, the BJP stalwart said that his candidature would break frontiers as far as the ethno-economic tangle in the Darjeeling hills was concerned and would bring the matter to the notice of the international community. Tearing into the Communists, Mr Singh said that his destiny had brought him here with a definite purpose. “Destiny would unravel its objective with passing time. Yet one thing I can say for sure that the election in this particular constituency would usher in the beginning of the end of the Left thralldom. I have not come here to return as a frustrated man. I would stay put in this district, globally acclaimed for its natural bounty and would return after accomplishing my preordained work that is bringing about all round development to this ill-treated region,” he said.
Dwelling on the subject of infiltration, the BJP veteran said that his party, if voted back to power, would evolve foolproof mechanism to end incessant stream of infiltration from across Bangladesh. “The infiltration amounts to a veritable invasion having serious bearing on the demographic composition of the country. Yet this problem remains unaddressed because of the myopic and vote-centered vision of the Congress and the Communists,” he said. Mr Asok Bhattacharya, however, expressed apprehension of major flare-ups in the district in the run up to the election. “The EC should deploy para-military forces immediately. We have information that the GJMM would seek help from the dreaded ULFA and the KLO to let loose a reign of terror in the remote areas of the hills. The air of desperation is palpable amongst the GJMM rank and file and it would take any action in its desperation to capture the seat,” he said.

Gurung seeks N-E help for Gorkhaland stir

GUWAHATI: Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) chief Bimal Gurung has asked Nepali organizations in the North-East to extend support to the Gorkhaland

stir.

On Thursday, the GJM convened a meeting of representatives of Gorkha organizations here seeking their co-operation.

While addressing the gathering, Gurung said, “There are about 1.20 crore Gorkhas living in the country, including northeastern states. But they are facing an identity crisis. Although we are carrying out a movement in Darjeeling, we need support from people of our community living outside.”

About 15 Gorkha organizations and student bodies from seven northeastern states took part in the meeting held in the ITA complex at Machkhowa here. Many intellectuals and scholars of the community from Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh attended the convention.

“The demand for Gorkhaland is 102-years-old and is aimed at fulfilling the aspirations of the community. Hence, we are seeking support from Gorkhas organizations representing them in the North-East,” said a GJM leader. He denied any political purpose of the meeting ahead of elections.

Some of the leaders and Gorkha student bodies, who attended the meeting, said they would extend moral support to the movement but would not support the GJM in violent protests.

The GJM leader added that they would convene another meeting of social and cultural organizations representing the Gorkhas in the North-East after the Lok Sabha elections.