In a major blow to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Darjeeling success story, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) supporters raised Gorkhaland slogans in her presence at the North Bengal Festival at the mall in Darjeeling town forcing her to leave the podium in a huff. With this the entire programme came to a premature end. The fiasco also resulted in the cancellation of a meeting between Ms Banerjee and the chief executive of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) and GJM supremo, Bimal Gurung.
This drama unfolded in Darjeeling only an hour before a GJM delegation met BJP leader L.K. Advani in Delhi to seek his support for their separate homeland demand. Just days ahead of the chief minister’s Darjeeling visit, the GJM had queered the pitch by reviving its Gorkhaland demand.
They further aggravated the matter by starting a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi to press for their demand. Till Monday morning, it was not clear if the GJM leadership would attend Tuesday’s government programme. However, Mr Gurung on Monday evening announced that he himself would attend the programme and so would his party supporters. However, by Ms Banerjee sitting by his side, Mr Gurung openly voiced his displeasure over the fact that the state government had kept the GTA in the dark about the details of the North Bengal Festival.
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‘Cm created a Frankenstein’
age correspondent
Kolkata, Jan. 29
Reacting to the development in Darjeeling on Tuesday, the Opposition CPI(M) said that chief minister Mamata Banerjee was solely responsible for this. “The chief minister had no reason to be so upset when the GJM supporters raised the Gorkhaland demand before her because the GJM had never dropped its demand for a separate homeland. It was for this reason that we had opposed the tripartite agreement. We had warned her that she was creating a Frankenstein which she would not be able to control. That is exactly what is happening...,” leader of Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra said.
To support his point, he referred to the incident when the Trinamul Congress was forced by the GJM to withdraw its candidates from GTA election.