Adivasis threaten stir in Terai, Dooars
The Mamata Banerjee government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) may have agreed to accept whatever report the high power committee headed by Justice Shyamal Sen submits in June but the Adivasi Vikas Parishad (AVP) has made it clear that it will not accept it. The AVP has threatened to launch a sustained agitation from April 1 in Terai and Dooars, opposing the GJM’s demand for inclusion of 396 mouzas of the plains in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).
On Saturday, the GJM and the chief minister came to an understanding according to which both agreed to hold the GTA elections only after the submission of the high power committee report on the mouzas of Dooars and Terai. “The fate of Dooars and Terai is being decided at the Writers’ Buildings between the government and the GJM. We are not involved so the question of accepting the high power committee’s recommendations simply does not arise,” state president of AVP Birsa Tirkey said on Monday. Mr Tirkey was sore with Ms Banerjee for not taking the local tribals of the Dooars and Terai region into confidence before making a deal with the GJM. “When an AVP delegation had met the chief minister in Kolkata in November, she had assured us that she would protect the interests of the denizens of the plains, 75 per cent of whom are STs,” Mr Tirkey said.
He claimed that the clause 5 of the GTA stated that it would comprise of areas spread in the three sub divisions of the hills namely Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong. “But the GJM is demanding the territories of the plains and the state also seems to have tacitly agreed to their demand,” he added.
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