Asok fears Centre will carve out Gorkhaland sans state nod

SNS, 16 Jul 2014 Siliguri: Former state urban development minister and senior CPI-M leader Asok Bhattacharya today said his party is apprehending that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre might divide the state and create a separate state of Gorkhaland in accordance with Article 3 of the Indian Constitution and without taking the consent of the state government.

“The previous UPA government had bifurcated Andhra Pradesh and created Telangana without the consent of the state government by using Article 3. Since the BJP is in favour of creating smaller states, we are apprehending that it may follow the same trend to create Gorkhaland without taking the opinion of the state government,” Mr Bhattacharya said here.

Saying that the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) had supported the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls for Gorkhaland, he said: “The party had supported the Bharatiya Janata Party to achieve their separate statehood goal. We demand that both the BJP and the GJMM jointly say in public what their current stand is in this regard.”

Mr Bhattacharya also slammed the Centre for allegedly ignoring the Darjeeling Hills in the Union budget. “No fund was allotted for the Hills in the budget.

Nothing has been men-tioned of the Hill Area Development Programme. The Centre totally ignored the Hills in the budget,” he said. Talking about chief minister Mamata Bannerjee's visit to Darjeeling from 16 July, Mr Bhattacharya took a dig on her possible announcement of the Tamang Development Board.

“The Lepcha Development Board was set up and no one knows how much funds were given to it and what its functions are, and now the chief minister is set to form the Tamang Development Board. We suspect that many other such boards may come up for other communities as well," he said.