www.kalimpong.info

www.telegraphindia.com

Feb. 28: The legislation that put Darjeeling on the boil appears to be headed to the cold storage, sending Subash Ghisingh on an apparent last-ditch mission to Delhi, spreading cautious cheer among his rivals and gifting a breather to the Bengal government.

A parliamentary panel today “cautioned” and “advised” the Centre to make a “fresh assessment” before proceeding with two pieces of legislation that would have granted the Sixth Schedule status to Darjeeling.

“The committee would like to caution and advise the ministry of home affairs to make a fresh assessment of the ground realities before proceeding with the bills in the two Houses of Parliament,” the panel said in its 45-page report submitted to the Rajya Sabha today.

The panel said an “overwhelming majority” had repeatedly asserted that there would be bloodshed in the region if the bills were passed.

The panel’s report is not binding but, given the choice of words and the volatile situation in the hills, the Centre will find it difficult to ignore the warning and push ahead with the bills that seem to have few takers except Ghisingh. (more…)

indiatimes.com
29 Feb 2008, 0001 hrs IST,TNN

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel on Thursday put the brakes on bills seeking to accord special status to the Darjeeling hill areas and asked government to take another look before proceeding further, a move that may force the Centre to place the issue - initiated at West Bengal government’s behest - on the backburner.

The suggestions of close scrutiny came from Parliament’s Standing Committee on Home Affairs which took note of a number of representations made before it both in favour and against the Bills in its nine sittings.

“The committee would like to caution and advise the ministry of home affairs (MHA) to make a fresh assessment of the ground realities all over again before proceeding with the Bills in the two Houses of Parliament,” the panel, headed by BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, said in its report presented to Rajya Sabha. (more…)

webindia123.com

Kolkata | February 28, 2008 9:45:15 PM IST

Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) leader Subhas Ghising was not asked to resign from the post of caretaker administrator of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), West Bengal Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said Thursday.

“No one was asked to quit in the meeting. Discussions are on with both parties - Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) and GNLF - and the government is now trying to bring normalcy in the hills,” Roy said.

GJM has crippled life in the three sub-divisions of Darjeeling district since Feb 20 along with an economic blockade since Feb 17 demanding a separate statehood and immediate sacking of Ghising as DGHC caretaker administrator.

Roy said the GNLF chief was not summoned to the state secretariat Thursday but he came to meet Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on his own.

The GNLF supremo again met Bhattacharjee Thursday at the Writers’ Buildings and discussed the political situation in the hills.

The state’s Chief Secretary Amit Kiran Deb and the home secretary were also present in the meeting.

“I can’t say anything more unless the discussions are over. If I comment everything in public now there will be no point in continuing discussion,” Roy said.

Ghising’s rival GJM is opposed to the constitution’s Sixth Schedule status for Darjeeling - which envisages greater autonomy - and instead demands a separate state.

The GNLF leader was forced to knock on the chief minister’s door after hundreds of GJM supporters confined him at Pintail village, a resort three km from Siliguri, for five days since his return from the national capital Feb 18 after holding talks with the central government over inclusion of Darjeeling in the Sixth Schedule.

Earlier, Ghising described his meeting with Bhattacharjee on Feb 23 as “positive”.

GJM chief Bimal Gurung also met the chief minister at his office here Wednesday night but he stuck to his demands. (IANS)

The Hindu

New Delhi (PTI): A Parliamentary panel on Thursday put brakes on the bills seeking to accord special status to Darjeeling hill areas and asked the Government to take a re-look before proceeding further.

After examining the bills, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Home Affairs advised the Home Ministry to have a fresh look at the move.

“The Committee would like to caution and advise the Ministry of Home Affairs to make a fresh assessment of the ground realities all over again before proceeding with the bills in the two Houses of Parliament,” the Committee, headed by BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, said in its report presented to Rajya Sabha.

It has been very exciting and at the same time frustrating to watch the developments taking place in the hills. A general uprising is in the offing - something we thought was required to topple the state-sponsored Ghisingh regime. We always wondered when would the people rise and speak out against the oppression and the exploitation. Well, now they have.

As exciting as that may be, we are also faced by the prospect of violence and uncertainty. No one - unless you are out on the streets with nothing to lose - likes political violence. Ironically, it will be the memories of the ’80s Agitation for Gorkhaland that will deter people for yet another movement. Because by all appearances a conflict between GNLF supporters and Morcha supporters seem imminent. That means we will again be fighting among ourselves. That was the biggest failure of the ’80s Agitation. It was not really a fight with the state as much as a internecine battle - a civil war. A minuscule minority of India fighting among each other will not secure a place even in the footnote of history.

GJMM has captured the imagination of the people although that could not be because of the party because it is only four months old. GJMM is currently a wave and if its benefactors want it to become a political party which can guide the hills into the 21st Century (Gorkhaland as much as it is dear to us, remains largely an abstract concept) it needs to do some dispassionate analysis.
It will be a miracle if GJMM’s demands are faced with sympathy by the Centre and the State and rest of the country (which includes the national media) as long as Gorkhaland remains the party’s main plank. A demand for separate state has always been perceived negatively, although it need not have been so. Historians should tell us why this is so. From Delhi a new state obviously is an additional burden on the exchequer, and from Kolkata…well, this is a city that booed the Indian cricket team when their local boy was removed from captainship. Need more be said about the Kolkata psyche?

It is good that the GJMM is opposing the 6th S. However, it is very detrimental to promise bloodshed if the 6th S is applied to Darjeeling hills. If we consider Delhi and Kolkata’s views it is a foregone conclusion that they will apply the Schedule on us and then go on to decimate the fledgling GJMM, so that the demand for Gorkhaland is shelved for another 50 years. This of course means a bout of trouble in the hills which will hurt us most than anybody.

This is what I humbly propose GJMM consider as its strategy - if they have not already thought about it.

1. Turn the focus of opposition against the Sixth Schedule into more an anti-GNLF wave

2. Once the 6th Schedule is imposed, agree to contest the elections (for this reason it will look quite ridiculous if the party agrees to contest the elections to a council they had so virulently opposed. It will be especially hard if any of those fasting die)

3. Once in power - and let GJMM not underestimate the state machinery that could come into play during the elections - the GJMM can then pass a resolution in the council for Gorkhaland

4. The powers that be will be forced to listen to GJMM which will not only have the mandate of the people, but also a Constitutional mandate.

5. The protracted negotiations for Gorkhaland can then begin.

Please Do Not Lose Hope.

Niraj

PS: The Sixth Schedule in itself is not a bad thing; the current shape being proposed for Darjeeling is.

www.telegraphindia.com

Calcutta/Santiniketan, Feb. 27: The indefinite hunger strike and the bandh in the Darjeeling hills will continue till the Bengal government removes Subash Ghisingh from the post of caretaker administrator of the DGHC and the Sixth Schedule bill is scrapped.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leadership stuck to this stand after a 75-minute discussion with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings this evening. The Morcha leaders said they would stay put in the city for a couple of days awaiting the government’s decision.

“We are happy with today’s discussion which went well. We got a good response from the chief minister. He said he would discuss our two primary demands with his cabinet colleagues and convey the government’s stand at the earliest. We are awaiting a speedy decision and will stay in the city for the moment,” said Bimal Gurung, the Morcha president. (more…)

A blog post detailing the author’s attempts to travel past the blockades on NH-31-A.

- http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/karmapaljor/75/50352/high-and-dry-on-the-highway.html

and

A blog to highlight the agitation in Darjeeling district and to detail and record the movement, something that the Indian media has not been doing.

- http://www.focusdarjeeling.blogspot.com/

From the blog description:

FocusDarjeeling is about drawing the attention of the nation to the ongoing agitation in Darjeeling district. Almost a month after hundreds of thousands have spontaneously rallied for a change in the political climate here, the issue has received minimal coverage in the national media. FocusDarjeeling is also about the thousands of emails/FAXs/letters from citizens of the district to national leaders and VIPs which have gone unanswered. In short, FocusDarjeeling is evidence of our existence.

www.telegraphindia.com

Siliguri, Feb. 27: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung today warned the Bengal government and the Centre that there would be bloodshed if the Sixth Schedule bill is passed in Parliament and the special status “thrust forcibly on the hills”.

Around 30km away, at Panighata in Naxalbari block, six policemen were injured when Morcha and GNLF supporters hurled stones at each other. One of them was shifted to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital.

“The state and Centre have already committed mistakes by not talking to the common man before drafting the Sixth Schedule bill. This created tension and if the status is conferred forcibly, we apprehend bloodshed,” Gurung told journalists at Dagapur on the outskirts of Siliguri. He arrived there at 11.30am to meet the 31 Morcha supporters who are on an indefinite hunger strike. (more…)

www.telegraphindia.com

Kalimpong, Feb. 27: Thousands of women have joined the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in its agitation for statehood. Two decades ago, the scene was different: women at best were passive participants in the movement for Gorkhaland led by the GNLF.

Conversations that The Telegraph had with a crosssection of women reveal that the sudden show of strength is not a result of the Morcha strategy alone, but a paroxysm of anger against the 21 years of GNLF rule.

Not that everybody is ready to admit it. One of them is Urmila Rumba, the convener of the Gorkha Janmukti Nari Morcha. While she agreed that resentment against the GNLF was the catalyst for the current uprising, she rejected the notion that the agitation was entirely spontaneous. “Women’s participation you see today in the agitation is a result of the groundwork done by our core committee,” Rumba said over phone from Darjeeling. (more…)

I had published the following post on my site in 2004 when the whole of Manipur was on fire against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Some time back when Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, prime suspect in the Hannah Foster rape/murder case, was arrested in this rather somnolent little town I met some young reporters who had charged upto Kalimpong along with their huge antenna sprouting, satellite connected vehicles. And during my discourse with them I learnt that there were such things as “hard” and “soft” news. “Soft news” was a totally forgettable report on a bookfair somewhere and “hard news” was what jerked you out of bed and made you switch on the TV.

So Kohli was “hard news”, an international criminal hiding behind the skirts of an innocent young woman whom he managed to beguile and marry in a small & otherwise unheard of town, and hard news was the annual flooding which ravaged the north east with predictable regularity. In other words hard news is sensational and it sells. But in their obsession for what sells, it is deplorable that the metro-centric media more often than not finds nothing else worth reporting in the north-east than the Kohlis or the insurgency or now Manipur.

I had written in the Outlook magazine (22 Dec 2003 issue) that unless the Centre, the Ambanis (corporate world) and the media give more attention to the North East, the sense of alienation which these states already feel will turn to open hostility. So while watching the hard news boiling out of Manipur and so many other North Eastern states and hearing that Indian goods are being boycotted there, I feel a grim sense of foreboding that perhaps my prediction is becoming a reality too soon.

Four years later, now with scores of young people on a fast unto death, with yet some more threatening self immolation for the cause of Gorkhaland, I am dismayed at the almost total news blackout in the national media. It seems uncanny that very little has been reported in the print media about the week long strife in the hills and almost deliberate that the TV channels find it more appropriate to give two whole days of news coverage to a small boy (Prince) who had fallen into a well while not even giving 5 minutes air time to the many young men and women now so intensely involved in the fight for their cause.

What shocked me was that on contacting a prominent national weekly, a friend of mine was told that the happenings here were not sensational enough to be news worthy as yet and that they would wait for “harder” news to come out of the hills..

So unbelievably, the media is actually waiting for people to start dying here before they come charging up once again.

-Praful Rao