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VIVEK CHHETRI

Darjeeling, Nov. 18: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s dream of winning elections to all four hill municipalities uncontested received a jolt with Independents remaining in the fray in five wards of the Mirik civic body.

When the withdrawal of the nominations closed today, the Morcha acted swiftly and announced the expulsion of three Independents.

“Of the five candidates who did not withdraw the nominations, three were our party members. We have expelled them for going against the party decision. The other two candidates don’t belong to the Morcha and are probably backed by the GNLF,” said Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri.

Eight persons had filed papers as Independents in six of the nine seats in Mirik. While Saraswati Tamang (ward 3), Nima Singh Tamang (ward 6) and Sunil Bomzom (ward 7) withdrew their nominations this afternoon, the other Independents decided to stay in the fray. The five are Bijay Tamang (ward 6), Roshan Tamang (ward 7), Krishna Sarkri (ward 8), Bijay Tamang (ward 9) and Pemba Tshering Bhutia (ward 2).

The candidates expelled from the Morcha are Bijay Tamang, Roshan Tamang and Krishna Sarki. “Bijay Tamang was a member of the party’s town committee, while Roshan Tamang was with the Yuva Morcha. Krishna Sarki belonged to the Nari Morcha,” said Giri.

The municipal elections will be held on December 11 and Morcha candidates will take on the Independents in five seats. The rest of the wards have been won by M.K. Zimba (ward 3), Manikala Ghalay (ward 1), Mala Subba (ward 4) and Barun Subba (ward 5). This essentially means that the Morcha needs to win one more seat to take control of the municipality.

If the Morcha loses all the five seats, it will have to sit in the Opposition and this could come as a major blow to the party in Mirik. Notable leaders who have to fight the elections are Arun Ghisingh (ward 2), the vice-president of the Morcha’s Mirik Mahakuma Parishad, and L.B. Rai (ward 7), a central committee member of the party and a former chairperson of the Mirik municipality.

The Morcha has declared that Rai will be the chairperson of the Mirik municipality if the party wins the polls.

After retreating from the contest, Saraswati Tamang said she had filed the papers to drive home the point that no leader could carry on without taking others on board.

“Even though I was an ex-commissioner of the Mirik municipality and a member of the Morcha, certain leaders of the branch committee used to domineer over me. I was never against the party but wanted to prove a point. As I am convinced with the assurances of the central committee members, I decided to withdraw the nomination in the interest of the party,” she said.

Bijay Tamang, one of the expelled Morcha members, said: “We do not have any negative attitude towards the party but since this is a democratic country, we have decided to contest the elections.”

Although the Morcha has won all the seats uncontested in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong, the boards there can be formed only after the election process in Mirik is over. Counting of votes in Mirik will take place on December 13.
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AVIJIT SINHA

Siliguri, Nov. 18: A delegation of industrialists from north Bengal has proposed to twin Darjeeling hills with England’s only tea garden, Tregothnan, for free flow of tourists and exchange of tea.

The proposal came from the North Bengal zonal council of the Confederation of Indian Industry, when a team visited the Tregothnan estate in September. The estate in Cornwall in the south-west of England comprises tea plantation, dense woods and several tourist attractions.

“It was nice to visit the estate that is spread over two counties of Cornwall and Kent. Tea is cultivated on around 100 acres on the estate. We proposed that Tregothnan can be twinned with Darjeeling hills, especially with focus on Darjeeling tea. There can be exchange of information, different species of tea and other flora between the two places,” said Ramgopal Jajodia, the chairperson of the zonal council of the CII.

Jonathon Jones, a director of the Tregothnan estate, told the delegation that he would take a positive look at the proposal.

“He (Jones) seemed to be enthusiastic about the idea and said joint efforts need to be made to forge the tie-up by including the stakeholders of the Darjeeling tea industry and the governments of India and the UK,” said Jajodia. (more…)

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Calcutta: A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to Subhas Tamang, an accused in the Madan Tamang murder case. The court has directed Subhas not to go out of Darjeeling town till further orders. He has been asked to furnish a bail bond of Rs 20,000 with two sureties from two persons from Darjeeling and he would have to visit the CBI camp office in Darjeeling every Monday, Wednesday and Friday till further orders. The court, however, declined to grant bail to three other accused who had also applied for reprieve this time.
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RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Kalimpong, Nov. 16: Vehicle owners in Kalimpong are unable to pay taxes as the administration is yet to make alternative arrangements after an arson destroyed all documents in the motor vehicle office here.

A mob had set on fire a single-storied building that used to house the motor vehicle department office in Kalimpong following the February 8 police firing at Sibchu. Although the entire building was not gutted in the fire, the motor office bore the brunt of the attack.

People in the Darjeeling hills had been refusing to pay all kinds of taxes and bills for over three years as part of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s non-co-operation movement for statehood. The party had asked the people to resume paying taxes from August following the signing of the GTA agreement.

However, vehicle owners in Kalimpong can’t pay the taxes as the local motor vehicle office lost all documents in the fire and officials haven’t yet received any directive from the higher-ups on how to go about collecting the money.

“An owner has to pay the tax in the office where his vehicle is registered. If he wants to make the payment in another place, he has to close his account in the office where the vehicle is registered and obtain a no-objection certificate,” said an official of the motor department.

The motor vehicle office in Kalimpong now operates from a temporary tin structure behind the building that was torched by the mob.

“People keep visiting the makeshift office to pay the tax, but we are helpless. However, we are making new records and case files if the vehicle owners come to us with documents like the blue book,” said an official.

Darjeeling district magistrate Saumitra Mohan also said creating new records with the documents the vehicle owners had was the only way out.

“I have told the RTO (road transport officer in Darjeeling) to start collecting taxes there (read Kalimpong). We have to re-enter the records, there is no other alternative,” he said over the phone.

The Kalimpong motor office is waiting for the order from the RTO to start the tax collection. The owners will have to pay huge fine if they take their vehicles to road without paying the tax.

Janmukti Chalak Mahasangh, a drivers’ association, has urged the administration to make necessary arrangements to enable people to pay their motor vehicle tax.

“We have written to the subdivisional officer in this regard. Some kind of arrangement must be made at the earliest,” said T.D. Bhutia, the president of the Mahasangh.

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VIVEK CHHETRI

Darjeeling, Nov. 16: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today threatened to expel eight dissidents who had filed nominations against the official party candidates for the municipality elections in Mirik.

In two wards, the Morcha candidates have to fight two Independents each if they don’t withdraw the nominations by November 18, the last date for doing so.

Just when the Morcha was looking to take control of all four hill municipalities of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and Mirik uncontested since the other parties have boycotted the elections, the dissidents’ move has come as an embarrassment.

Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri was in Mirik today to ask the dissidents to withdraw their nominations. “We have told them to withdraw their nominations against the official party candidates by November 18, failing which they will be expelled,” Giri said over the phone from Mirik.

Last week, Morcha president Bimal Gurung had said in a warning that those who had not been given party tickets as official candidates should not file nominations as Independents. He had said rebels would be expelled and would not be taken back in the party even if they won the election. None of the dissidents spoke to the media.

In the nine-seat municipality, Pema Tshering Bhutia has decided to take on the vice-president of the Morcha’s Mirik Mahakuma Committee, Arun Ghisingh, in ward 2. Two Independents Roshan Tamang and Sunil Bomzom are contesting against L.B. Rai, a central committee member and a former chairperson of the Mirik municipality, in ward 7.

This time, too, Rai is tipped to be the Morcha candidate for the chairperson’s post. The other Independents include Saraswati Tamang (ward 3), Krishna Sarki (ward and Bijay Tamang (ward 9). Bijay Tamang and Nima Singh Tamang have both filed nominations as Independents in ward 6.

None has filed nominations against the Morcha candidates in wards 1, 4 and 5 in Mirik. The Morcha’s candidates who are likely to win uncontested from these three wards are Manikala Ghalay, Mala Subba and Barun Subba.

This development in Mirik also means that the formation of the municipal boards in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong — where none has filed nominations against the Morcha — could be delayed by almost a month.

District magistrate Saumitra Mohan said if there was scope of contest even in a single ward in any of the four hill municipalities, no board will be formed till the December 11 elections are over.

“In such a scenario, the boards will be formed only after the election process is complete,” said Mohan.

Officially, the administration can declare the Morcha candidates winners in seats where there are no other contestants only after the last day of withdrawal of nominations.
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Nov. 14: The CPM will not contest the civic polls to be held in the Darjeeling hills after seven years for fear that it will be attacked as “police and administration are no longer with the Left party”.

The CPM’s admission — that shorn of the power to control the administration it has become vulnerable — comes barely six months after the party had fielded candidates in the Assembly elections in Darjeeling though it was aware even then that it had little chance against the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

Earlier this month, the other Morcha rivals — the CPRM, Congress, and the GNLF — had said they would not contest the December 11 civic elections. At that time, the CPM had tried to coax the Opposition parties into putting up consensus candidates, a proposal shot down by all outfits except the ABGL.

Today, along with the CPM, the ABGL, too, said it would not contest the polls.

The last day for filing nominations is tomorrow. The Morcha might win uncontested if nobody else files nominations for the seats in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and the Mirik municipalities.

Former hill affairs minister and the CPM Siliguri strongman Asok Bhattacharya today said the status of his party was different during the Assembly polls. “Then the Election Commission was there as the watchdog. Besides, the state police and the administration were with us. They had the power to control law and order in the hills. But now, under Trinamul government, even the police are in cahoots with the Morcha. So, who will protect us? There is no democratic atmosphere for participating in the municipal elections,” Bhattacharya said.

CPM Rajya Sabha member Saman Pathak said the Morcha had been intimidating his party members.

“We had serious apprehensions that the Morcha would try to foment trouble and it has turned out to be true. Till sometime ago, we were confident that we, along with the other Opposition parties in the hills, would be able to put up some consensus candidates. But the Morcha threat forced the others to back out. We were left alone and given the current state of affair, we decided not to participate in the election,” he said.

Pathak alleged that numerous pleas to the administration — including the district magistrate — to see to it that non-Morcha parties could carry on with their political activities in the hills had gone unheeded.

In Darjeeling, ABGL president Bharati Tamang said: “We had thought that with the change in guard, democracy would be back in the hills. But the new government is working like the previous one.”

Tamang also added that the election was just a ploy to derail the Gorkhaland demand. “The state has forced the municipality elections without consulting the other political parties,” she said. “The people in the hills cannot come forward openly and so, the elections cannot be fair. Even the last Assembly elections were not held in a free and fair atmosphere.”

The Morcha said that in all probability it would win all seats uncontested. The Bimal Gurung-led outfit said while it was glad that it would be a fight-less win, the rivals themselves were to blame for this situation.

“As far as democracy is concerned, it is not good that there will be no contest. But this only indicates the lack of credibility of the Opposition parties among the hill people,” Morcha spokesperson Harka Bahadur Chhetri said. “The allegations made by these parties are baseless. They bit the dust in the last polls. This time, realising that the results would be similar, they have walked out of the contest. It is better that they act like responsible Opposition parties.”
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Kalimpong, Nov. 11: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today warned that aspiring contestants who had not made it to the candidate list for the civic polls should not contest as Independents as they would not be taken back into the party fold even if they won.

The party today announced the candidates for all the 23 wards of the Kalimpong municipality. Candidates in 10 wards were selected unanimously but there were multiple claimants to tickets for the remaining 13 seats.

Senior Morcha leaders, including president Bimal Gurung and general secretary Roshan Giri, were present during the entire selection process that ended after seven hours with the announcement of the names.

In fact, the Town Hall, was a beehive of activity as ticket seekers and supporters thronged the venue of the selection committee meeting.

While the selection went on inside the hall under the watchful eyes of senior party leaders, the supporters of ticket aspirants waited outside.

“I have come here to lend my support to Prashant Singh. I am glad that he has got the ticket. I am certain he will not disappoint the residents of our ward or the party,” said N.K. Sherpa, a resident of Ward 21.

Yesterday, the Morcha had brought out the list of candidates for the Darjeeling, Mirik and Kurseong municipalities for the December 11 polls.

In wards, where there were more than one aspirant, Gurung asked the supporters of the prospective candidates to select a consensus candidate and then come back to him. It was then, in an attempt to discourage dissidence that he warned those who had been rejected. He said they should not contest as Independents.

“The party will have nothing to do with such a candidate. They will not be taken into the party fold even if they win,” he said.

Gurung also said the elected councillors must work in consultation with a board to be formed in each ward and made up of two members each from every unit of the party.

“Those (councillors) who work without consulting the board will be asked to resign,” he warned.

The Morcha had formed four groups of six members each in Kalimpong to zero in on the party candidates. The groups had over the past three days visited the wards and short-listed prospective contestants after interacting with a cross-section of local people. It had identified 10 wards, which had only one claimant to the ticket. Ward 22 was one of them. The party had already announced the candidature of L.B. Parihar from this seat.

In fact, the party has also made it known that Parihar, the former principal secretary of the DGHC, will be the chairperson of the municipality if the party wins the election.

As in the case of the other hill municipalities, the Morcha has given almost half the seats to women in Kalimpong too. Although only 8 of the 23 wards are reserved for women under the Election Commission norms, the party has given as many as 12 seats to the Nari Morcha for its contribution to the intensive statehood movement.

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Kalimpong, Nov. 10: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has given tickets to five non-Gorkhas in the elections to four municipalities “to acknowledge the contribution” made by the other communities to the party’s movement.

Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri said representatives of these communities would be fielded in three wards of the 32-member Darjeeling civic body and one ward each in Kalimpong and Kurseong.

The Kalimpong municipality has 23 wards, while the Kurseong civic board has a strength of 20 members.

“This is to acknowledge the contribution made by the non-Gorkha communities to our struggle. It is not the Gorkhas alone who have participated in our movement. Other communities in the hills, too, have lent their wholehearted support,” said Giri.

The Morcha has decided to field Zahid Khan in ward 18, Subhomoy Chatterjee in ward 25 and Binod Rakhecha in ward 24 in Darjeeling, and Soni Raut in ward 1 in Kurseong. Although the party is yet to announce the list of candidates for Kalimpong, Subash Gupta is tipped to contest from ward 3. His name was proposed by the Janmukti Minorities’ Front, which had been asked by the parent organisation to pick a candidate from among non-Gorkhas for a ward in Kalimpong.

All the five candidates are members of the Minorities’ Front, a frontal organisation of the Morcha. However, no ticket has been given to non-Gorkhas in the elections to the nine-member Mirik civic body.

Gupta said he was obliged both to the Morcha and the Minorities’ Front. “I am happy that they have given me such a platform. I will work honestly and with dedication both for the front and the party.”

Gupta is a businessman, but people here know him as a footballer, having played for various clubs in the Darjeeling hills and Sikkim from the late seventies to the mid-nineties.

Observers said the decision of the Morcha to award tickets to the non-Gorkhas in the hills would go down well with the people. “By giving tickets to the minority communities, the Morcha is sending out a message that it is an inclusive party. The decision shows that the party wants to take everyone on board the development cart,” said an observer.

The Morcha’s decision to give the chairmanship of the Darjeeling and Kalimpong municipalities to its study forum members Amar Rai and L. B. Parihar respectively in the event of the party’s victory, too, has drawn praise.

“Both Parihar and Rai are of great stature and by projecting them as the heads of the civic body, the Morcha is telling people that it is serious about providing effective governance. Both are men of integrity and experience,” said another observer.

While Parihar is the former principal secretary of the DGHC, Rai was the vice-principal of Loreto College in Darjeeling.

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VIVEK CHHETRI

Darjeeling, Nov. 10: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has allotted almost half the seats in three hill municipalities to women who had proved their mettle in the party’s intensive agitation for statehood.

The Morcha today announced the candidate list for Darjeeling, Kurseong and Mirik municipalities which will go to polls on December 11.

Although 11 seats are reserved for women in the Darjeeling civic board, members of the Gorkha Janmukti Nari Morcha will be fielded in 15 of the 32 wards. The Nari Morcha was allocated so many seats by the parent organisation as a large number of women were at the forefront of strikes and demonstrations in the movement for Gorkhaland in the past three years.

In the civic polls, one-third of wards are reserved for women.

The dominant party in the Darjeeling hills has ensured a fair deal for women in Mirik too. “Of the nine wards in Mirik, three are reserved for women according to the Election Commission roster. But we have nominated women to contest polls in four wards,” said Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri.

It is only in Kurseong that the Morcha did not nominate more women than what is reserved for them by the Election Commission. The Morcha today nominated women to seven seats in the Kurseong municipality. The civic body has a 20-member board.

The Morcha has not yet finalised the candidate list for the 23 wards of the Kalimpong municipality although it has decided to make L.B. Pariyar, a retired IAS officer and a member of the party’s study forum, the chairperson in case of a victory.

Giri said the party had given preference to women keeping in mind their contribution to the movement. “We had announced earlier that the party would acknowledge the contribution made by the Nari Morcha to the statehood movement,” said Giri.

Three women had shed blood in the Gorkhaland agitation spearheaded by the Morcha since 2007. While two women died in police firing at Sibchu earlier this year, a bullet fired allegedly from a GNLF leader’s house killed another activist, Pramila Sharma, in Darjeeling in June 2008.

The Morcha has chosen candidates, party sources say, after hearing the public opinion.

“We assembled all our supporters and asked them to choose candidates for the respective wards. It was only in some wards where nobody had a clear mandate and we had to draw lots to choose the nominees. In few cases, we directly picked up the candidates. Our selections were made keeping in mind various criteria and one was definitely the candidate’s involvement in the movement,” said a Morcha leader.

Party insiders said the number of women vying for party tickets was also huge. “Most of the wards in Darjeeling had at least one woman interested in getting a party ticket,” said a source.

Observers believe that the active participation of the Nari Morcha in the agitation has propelled a lot of women into active politics.

The filing of nominations started on November 8 and will close on November 15. The Morcha candidates will start filing papers from tomorrow.

Urmila Rumba, a Nari Morcha core committee member, said she was happy that the leadership had selected women candidates far more than expected.

“However, I want to say, not as a party member, but as a feminist that at least one post of the chairperson in any of the four municipalities should be given to a woman so that we get more responsibilities to discharge,” she said.

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Indian Express
Express News Service
Thu Nov 10 2011, 02:56 hrs

In a change of stand, the Gorkha Mukti Morcha (GJM) has agreed to allow local elections to be held in Darjeeling district.

The GJM was earlier adamant on not allowing local polls till the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration’s (GTA) territory was determined.

The dates for the municipal elections were declared on Tuesday with the State Election Commission issuing a notification to ths effect. Civic polls to the four Hill municipalities — Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and Mirik — are slated for December 11.

But the joint verification committee is not likely to submit its report on the inclusion of 400 mouzas from Terai and the Dooars region into the GTA till the end of January.

“We had some political compulsion because of which we changed our stand and allowed the elections to be held. But we have made it clear that we will never allow the elections to the GTA until its territory is determined and the high-power committee submits its report,” said a senior member of the GJM central committee.

The member said the GJM is disappointed with the pace of the joint verification committee.

“It was formed in July. More than three months have passed and the committee has met just once. We are not aware when the next meeting of the joint verification committee will be held and it is sitting on the survey,” he added.

GJM general secretary Roshan Giri said the government requested them to allow the civic elections in Darjeeling.

“For the sake of the development in Darjeeling, we have agreed to allow the elections here. We will also take part in the elections.”

But though Giri declared that the GJM will take part, the other parties are still indecisive. The GJM and other Hill parties met the district magistrate to discuss the elections.
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Darjeeling, Nov. 9: Tara Sundas of the CPM today announced that he would contest next month’s civic elections though his party has not taken the final decision to fight the polls, an indication that the Opposition outfits have failed to select consensus candidates.

The CPM has been trying to bring the parties opposed to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha together in an attempt to use the civic elections as a platform to create some political space for the Opposition. “Yes, we are taking a lead in consolidating the anti-Morcha parties. Winning or losing the election is not important for us but we want to use this election to initiate a process where other political parties can resume their activities and bring in some resemblance of normality,” said Saman Pathak, the CPM Rajya Sabha member from Darjeeling.

However, the CPM effort seems to be hitting too many hurdles. CPM leaders admitted in private that the CPRM decision not to contest the elections has upset their equation. (more…)

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Siliguri, Nov. 7: The five leaders of the Dooars-Terai unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad will justify their decision to support the inclusion of the regions in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration in their reply to the showcause notices.

In the reply to be submitted tomorrow, they will also ask the state leadership to “realise the ground reality” in the Dooars and the Terai and underline how the people of the two regions would benefit by joining the hill set-up.

Tezkumar Toppo, the general secretary of the Parishad and one of the five to have been showcaused, told The Telegraph: “If we join the (Gorkha Janmukti) Morcha and form the Gorkhaland and Adivasi Territorial Administration, a lot of benefits would accrue to us. This is what the state leadership must understand and appreciate. However, we will admit that it was a mistake on our part to have signed the agreement with the Morcha without informing the state leadership.” (more…)