www.kalimpong.info

Here are some historical photographs of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to Kalimpong in 1952.

Some great sights of Kalimpong & Mela ground back in the day. Thanks to Mr. Tenpa for the discovery.

(Click here for more photographs from this series)

Prime Minister addresses a public meeting at Kalimpong on April 29, 1952.

Prime Minister address a public meeting at Kalimpong on April 29, 1952.

Prime Minister addresses a public meeting at Kalimpong on April 29, 1952.

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The Telegraph

The students aim at targets at the Gorkha Archery Training Centre in Kalimpong; Paril (second from left in the picture below) gives the students some tips. Pictures by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, March 23: Twenty-two students from different schools of Kalimpong are learning new skills in archery from Paril Lepcha at a training centre here.

The 17-year-old Paril was the first to put Kalimpong on the archery map of the country by her consistent performances in various age-group competitions both at the state and national-levels over the past five years.

The session at the Gorkha Archery Training Centre is on an extended run primarily because of the overwhelming response of the children. The programme that began on March 2 was originally planned to be a fortnight long, but the centre decided to extend it by another 15 days to enable the students to absorb the finer points of the sport. The archery is fast gaining in popularity among the youngsters in the Kalimpong subdivision. (more…)

The Telegraph

Darjeeling, March 23: The ABGL office here was ransacked and the furniture burnt by a group of people this afternoon.

The office of Madan Tamang’s party at Ladenla Road had been targeted twice before and like in the past, the ABGL accused the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha of today’s vandalism also.

Only two ABGL members, Mohan Sharma and Binod Gurung, were present when a group of people barged into the office and asked them to move out around 2.30pm. The mob smashed the tables and chairs in the office and brought out some furniture on the road and set them on fire. (more…)

BBC News
11:29 GMT, Tuesday, 23 March 2010

One of the top leaders of a radical left-wing uprising in India called the Naxalbari rebellion has committed suicide, police say.

Kanu Sanyal, 81, was found hanging in his bedroom in Naxalbari village in the state of West Bengal.

Mr Sanyal was suffering from many ailments and had been depressed, the police say.

He led a peasant uprising in 1967 in Naxalbari, in which 11 farmers were killed in police firing .

The rebellion took its name from the village as Mr Sanyal and his close friend Charu Majumder broke away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to form a new party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

The CPI (M-L) led the armed radical movement that shook West Bengal and the rest of the country in the 1970s.

Mr Sanyal was eventually arrested and was imprisoned in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

He was released from jail in 1977, following a change of government in India as well as in West Bengal.

Later, Mr Sanyal publicly renounced violence and formed the Organising Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (OCCR).

A year ago, Mr Sanyal told the BBC that he was opposed to the “politics of violence”.

“Our violent movement had served no purpose, it will not serve any,” he said.

That did not endear him to India’s Maoists who say they bear the legacy of India’s first left-wing radical uprising.

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www.kalimpong.info

Anubhav’s photographic abilities are summed up in this magical view of Kalimpong.

Enjoy.

ps. This link contains more of his fantastic photography.

The Telegraph
RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Kalimpong, March 22: The Kalimpong municipality is facing acute water shortage because of a prolonged dry season and although the civic body has charted contingency plans to tackle the scarcity, most measures seem to be long term and are not expected to be of immediate help.

As there has been no rainfall since October 15, rivers have dried up and the municipality and the water works department of the DGHC are depending on small streams to meet the water demand.

“As much as 60 per cent water has dried up in the Neora Khola, Relli Khola and the Thukchuk Khola because of lack of winter rain,” said Anil Chhetri, the executive engineer of PHE (water works), which supplies water to the municipality area.

The Neora, Relli and the Thukchuk are the three main sources of water in the town. “To solve the scarcity, we have started pumping water from the jhoras. However, the water we draw from the jhoras (streams) is not enough to meet the demand,” said Chhetri.

Seeking the co-operation of the people to tide over the crisis, the executive engineer said it would help if the consumers ensured that there was no leakage of water from faulty pipes. “Many consumers use poor substitutes of galvanised iron pipes, resulting in colossal leakage of water. In our estimate, as much as 70 lakh litres of water are lost a year because of faulty pipelines,” said Chhetri.

The water works department supplies water to 5,000-odd households in the municipality area for about 30 minutes on alternate days. However, nowadays the residents are being provided with water for half an hour once in three days.

“We will be doing a few things to augment the water supply in the town: the second reservoir at Deola will be repaired and new pipelines with a thickness of 10-12 inches will be laid from the Neora to the reservoirs,” said Chhetri.

Till that happens, the residents will have to continue making their own arrangements for water. In fact, even during the best of times, the residents pay Rs 150 to Rs 200 to buy 1,000 litres of water from the market. “I am buying water at Rs 170 per 1,000 litre. Even that is difficult to get because of the increase in demand,” said Nilesh Khadka, a resident of BL Dixit Road.

Amyas Tshering, the subdivisional officer of Kalimpong, said the civic body was working on a contingency plan to tackle the situation. “Like in Darjeeling, we are thinking of supplying water to residents on vehicles. The department concerned has already talked to the DGHC in this regard.”

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www.kalimpong.info

The Telegraph

Darjeeling, March 22: The ABGL has been accused of “misleading” the people and trying to create a law and order problem in the hills, a day after its supporters burned the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s proposal for an interim set-up.

Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri said: “Madan Tamang is misleading the hill people over our demand to grant tribal status to the hill people. Granting tribal status and including the region (under Sixth Schedule) are two different issues which Tamang has not understood.” (more…)

The Telegraph

Siliguri, March 22: Bimal Gurung’s party today said the chief minister was welcome to watch the Kanchenjungha from Darjeeling even as tour operators alleged that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s “limitations in visiting the hills” would affect tourist flow to the region.

“Politically, our positions might be different, but in general, he (chief minister) has been always welcome in the hills,” said Harka Bahadur Chhetri, the media and publicity secretary of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. (more…)

The Telegraph

Darjeeling, March 22: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is set to “revise” the “secret proposal” sent to the Centre on the interim arrangement for the hills to safeguard the interests of the Schedule Castes.

The Morcha, in its proposal to Union home minister P. Chidambaram, had said “all Gorkha communities should be given Schedule Tribe status”.

Today, Morcha president Bimal Gurung while addressing party supporters at Mahanadi in Kurseong said: “We will make some revisions in the proposal largely to safeguard the interest of the Schedule Castes in the hills. The privileges the community is currently receiving should not be diluted. We will write to the Centre soon.” The details of the content of the letter have not been spelt out. (more…)

The Telegraph

Darjeeling, March 21: Supporters of the ABGL here today burnt copies of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s proposal for an interim arrangement, saying it was no better than the Sixth Schedule status demanded by the GNLF earlier.

Around 60 people led by ABGL president Madan Tamang took out a rally from the party office at Ladenla Road to Club Stand, where the copies were burned around 2.10pm. The supporters shouted slogans against the interim set-up and for Gorkhaland.

At a media conference, Tamang accused the Morcha of trying to hoodwink the people by settling for a special status under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution on the pretext of the interim set-up.

“The Morcha’s demands to grant ST status to all Gorkhas and set up a tribal research institute are a sure give-away that its proposal is nothing but the Sixth Schedule status,” he said.

Tamang said an ABGL delegation would meet the Union home minister in Delhi before April 15 and submit a memorandum to him, seeking the separate state, and if an audience was not granted because of pressure from the Bengal government, he would sit on a dharna in front of the home ministry in the capital.

The Morcha on many occasions in the past had stopped the ABGL from taking out processions, but no such opposition was visible today.

However, Tamang alleged that many supporters had been prevented from attending the rally by the Morcha in different parts of Darjeeling district.

An ABGL member, Ramesh Rai, filed an FIR with Darjeeling Sadar police station, accusing Puran Thamy, the town committee secretary of the Morcha, and another person of assaulting him while returning from the rally.
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The Telegraph

Siliguri, March 21: The state government expects a breakthrough to end the Darjeeling hill impasse at the sixth round of tripartite talks scheduled in the middle of May, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here today.

Bhattacharjee, who was on a two-day visit to Siliguri, was speaking to journalists at the Circuit House here before leaving for Calcutta.

“We have both the proposals (one by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and the other by the Centre) with us and discussions are on. We expect a major positive development at the talks scheduled in May. The issue might not be resolved at that meeting, but there would be some fruitful progress towards a solution,” he said. “As of now, the situation in the hills is peaceful.” (more…)

The Telegraph
ARCHIS MOHAN WITH INPUTS FROM VIVEK CHHETRI

New Delhi, March 18: The Centre adopted a carrot-and-stick policy in an attempt to push through an interim solution to the Gorkha issue at today’s tripartite talks in the capital.

It offered the carrot of unlimited development funds for the new interim autonomous authority it has proposed for the Darjeeling hills — an attractive prospect for an out of power Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

The Centre’s stick came in the shape of a veiled warning to the Morcha — reach an agreement on the interim autonomous authority by the next two tripartite meetings, else wait for Bengal Assembly elections to be over. (more…)