Youth vent ire, hill party mum - Yuva Morcha targets Mamata

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, July 24: The Gorkha Janmukti Yuva Morcha today plastered posters against chief minister Mamata Banerjee here, days after Bimal Gurung met the chief minister in an indication of an improvement in their relations.

The central committee of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha officially distanced itself from the youth wing’s anti-Mamata campaign.

Sources in the Morcha said the parent organisation was officially dissociating itself from the youth wing’s activities as a strategy of trying to keep a working relation with the state government and creating enough noises in Darjeeling at the same time to attract the Centre’s attention.

The posters written in Nepali were found at Chowk Bazar in Darjeeling. One of the posters read: “We will not accept the suppressive administration of the chief minister who claims that the hills are smiling after tormenting the hill people.”

Another poster protested the “politicisation of the administration by the Trinamul Congress government”. There was also a poster that questioned the state administration’s alleged dual roles of arresting “innocent” people in the hills and letting Trinamul cadres involved in spreading terror in the rest of Bengal go scot-free.

Prakash Gurung, the GTA Sabha member of Rimbik-Lodhama and spokesman for the Yuva Morcha, said: “This is the beginning of our renewed programme for Gorkhaland. Our party was formed with a single point agenda, which is the creation of Gorkhaland and we will continue to work to achieve our dream. The BJP is in favour of creating smaller states and we cannot let go of this opportunity.”

He said the Yuva Morcha would organise a public meeting in Kalimpong on August 2 and was planning to hold dharnas and rallies in New Delhi when Parliament’s winter session starts in December.

Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Morcha, said he was not aware of the Yuva Morcha’s posters. “I am not aware of the posters. This is not the Morcha’s central committee’s programme,” he said.

Sources in the Yuva Morcha said its leaders had met GTA Sabha chief executive Bimal Gurung in Darjeeling recently, but it was a closed-door meeting, so details about it were not available.

Told about the July 18 meeting between Gurung and Mamata in Darjeeling, Yuva Morcha spokesman Prakash Gurung said: “The meeting was between the heads of two administrative set-ups. The party is clear that our ultimate goal is Gorkhaland.”

On another front, there was no withdrawal of nine companies of CRPF from the hills today as claimed by Trinamul.

Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi, the superintendent of police, Darjeeling, said he had not received any communication on the issue.