The Telegraph

Siliguri, Feb. 9: Ten supporters of the Bangla O Bangla Bhasha Banchao Committee were arrested here today shortly before they were to protest the attack on a police constable allegedly by Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters in Kalimpong last week.

The protesters, who were on way to Pintail Village to demonstrate, were picked up on Hill Cart Road near Mallaguri.

“We protest the attack by the Morcha supporters on a policeman on February 4 evening and want the administration to arrest the culprits,” said Mukunda Majumdar, the committee president.

In a letter to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee yesterday, the committee iterated that no autonomy should be granted to the hills. “However, keeping in mind that the Gorkhas are a majority in the three hill subdivisions, we propose the bifurcation of the existing Darjeeling district into Darjeeling and Siliguri districts. While the former will comprise the three hill subdivisions, the Siliguri district can be formed with the plains area,” Majumdar said.

The letter also suggested that 18 mouzas in the foothills, which were part of the Siliguri subdivision earlier but included in the DGHC area in 2006 and 2007, should be brought back under the Siliguri administration.

Meanwhile, the GNLF has alleged that Morcha leaders are using the 2011 Assembly election as a shield to “hide their failure” to achieve Gorkhaland.

“When they (Morcha leaders) had announced that they would achieve Gorkhaland by March 2010, we kept quiet and allowed them to go ahead,” said Rajen Mukhia, the GNLF convener of the Terai, today. “Nowadays, the Morcha leaders are talking of some interim arrangement till the next Assembly election in Bengal and seem to have forgotten their previous commitment.”

The Morcha leaders have realised that they will not be able to achieve Gorkhaland and are simply hoodwinking the hill people by raking up the issue of Assembly polls. “This is nothing but an attempt to hide their failure. People have understood their capacity and are silently walking out of the Morcha and joining our party,” the GNLF leader said.

Mukhia said the Bengal government has succeeded in shifting the Morcha’s focus from statehood to a powerful council.

GNLF’s Kalimpong branch committee president Dawa Pakhrin said from Delhi that he was busy organising a national conference by the Bharatiya Federation for New States, an apex body of organisations raising statehood demands, in Nagpur at the month-end.

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