Allowing Gorkhaland Territorial Administration to function best bet in Darjeeling

Nirmalya Banerjee, TNN, Dec 11, 2013:KOLKATA: For the Mamata Banerjee government in Kolkata, the best bet in Darjeeling would be to allow the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha-led Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) run without interference and giving it the financial help promised under the GTA Act of 2011. This would not result, in the long run, in the demand for Gorkhaland but would, instead, put a lid on the agitation for a separate state for the time-being, at least till the next Lok Sabha elections.

People in the hills need a respite, and both the state government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) have a duty to provide them that. It would help to heal the wounds. In fact, since the signing of the GTA Accord in July 2011, things had been moving in the right direction till an intemperate comment from the chief minister in January this year stoked the fire again in the hills.

Political leaders in Kolkata would do well to remember that Gorkhaland is an emotive issue that GJM or any other party in the hills can ignore only at its own peril, especially in the face of external provocation like the decision to form a separate Telengana state.

One of the reasons GJM leaders had cited while resuming the agitation for a separate state was that the state government was not allowing GTA to function. One of the main grievances of the GJM was that GTA did not have as principal secretary an officer of the rank of a principal secretary to the state government. It was thought that a junior officer would not be able to handle sensitive issues that required dealings at the level of higher echelons of the government. The appointment of R.D. Meena as principal secretary at the directive of Calcutta High Court last April settled that issue.

Other issues still remained, like framing of rules of business so that the GTA Act could be put into operation. In their absence, "ad-hocism" would prevail in GTA, it is pointed out. Departments have been transferred to GTA, but their staff have not been transferred. Since the panchayati raj department is a transferred subject, GTA would like to have the block development officers under them as they are the key officials running panchayats, but they continue to be under the district magistrate. Disaster management is a key department in a landslide- prone area like Darjeeling and has been transferred to GTA, but neither its staff nor its budget, it is complained.

At a bipartite meeting between GJM and the state government held in Kolkata on November 20, some of these issues were addressed, but not all. Clearly, GJM leaders still have reservations. "I can't comment on what was achieved at the bipartite meeting as I was away and could not attend that meeting," says Trilok Dewan, Darjeeling MLA and a key member of GJM's think-tank team. The release of arrested GTA Sabha members continues to be a pending issue. The next day, at a tripartite meeting, GJM took up with representatives from Delhi issues that concerned the Centre, formation of a three-tier panchayat system under GTA, transfer of reserve forests to it, grant of scheduled tribe status to the entire hill population and the like.

That the Centre finally agreed to sit with GJM in a tripartite meeting since the announcement on Telengana and did not reject outright any of the demands raised by it is indicative of the importance Delhi is attaching to ensure that things do not spin out of control in the hills. Highly placed sources say the need to keep GTA running smoothly has increased after the recently concluded elections in Nepal. It is felt in Nepal that India had a hand in ensuring the defeat of the Maoists. Now, in a tit-for-tat policy, the Nepal Maoists could try to foment trouble in neighbouring Darjeeling. They point out that the Maoists, while coming overground, had surrendered only a small portion of the arms that they had held earlier. Dissatisfactions with the GTA, and resumption of statehood demand, would only help the Maoists to fish in troubled waters.