KOLKATA, July 7, 2011
It has been exactly a month since West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, after talks with leaders of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) asserted that the political crisis in the Darjeeling hills was well on its way to being resolved and the “matter settled….the problem solved.” Things, however, have not quite turned out that way.
It is not just that the tripartite meeting — involving the GJM, the Centre, and the West Bengal government — to put a final seal on the setting up of an elected body for the Darjeeling region, which Ms. Banerjee had then said would be held at the earliest, is yet to be convened. The GJM leadership has made it quite clear since its meeting with the Chief Minister on June 7 that there can be no “settlement” without its demand to include Gorkha-dominated areas in the Terai and Dooars within the territorial jurisdiction of the new set-up being met.
There still remain outstanding issues, some of which are expected to be taken up at the secretary-level talks between the State government and the GJM here on Friday.
This begs the question whether the “matter” was “settled” at all as claimed by the Chief Minister. GJM president Bimal Gurung, while addressing party workers in Darjeeling a week after Ms. Banerjee's announcement, pointed out that his colleagues in the delegation that met her had only signed on the “minutes” of the bipartite talks; this should not be construed as a “settlement.”
It's true that the State government and GJM agreed on the setting up of a nine-member committee to identify Gorkha-dominated areas in the Terai and Dooars for inclusion within the jurisdiction of the proposed body. But the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad, a tribal grouping which enjoys considerable following in parts of the Dooars and Terai, has announced that it will not agree to even “an inch” of the region being brought under a separate set-up. Ms. Banerjee's government would certainly not like to precipitate a situation that would inflame ethnic passions in the region.
And then there is the burning issue of a separate “Gorkhaland” state as is being demanded by the GJM — one which for political compulsions, if not any other — can ill-afford to be skipped even though the Chief Minister has been quite categorical that there can be no bifurcation of West Bengal.
Just as the GJM leadership has stated that underlying the minutes of the meeting between it and the State government on June 7 was an iteration of its “main agenda of Gorkhaland,” it has subsequently made clear that there can be no “final solution” to the political impasse in the Darjeeling hills that would, in any way, imply dilution of its Statehood demand.
Indications are that the Centre, already hard-pressed in the face of the agitation for a separate Telangana state, is weighing its options before it convenes the much-anticipated tripartite talks on Darjeeling, particularly in view of the GJM's stubborn stance on Gorkhaland demand.
Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article2207566.ece