Mann's veiled threat to pitch for Gorkhaland

GNLF president Mann Ghisingh being welcomed by party workers at the Mela
Grounds in Kalimpong on Sunday. Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Rajeev Ravidas, TT, Kalimpong, April 5: GNLF president Mann Ghisingh today indicated his party would have no choice other than to demand a separate state of Gorkhaland if the Centre and the state government continued to dishonour the Sixth Schedule agreement that they had signed with the party under the leadership of his late father Subash Ghisingh.

Delivering his first public address after taking over as the GNLF president following the death of Ghisingh senior on January 29 this year, Mann said his father felt betrayed by the Centre and the state government for their combined failure to implement the Sixth Schedule agreement in the hills. 

The tripartite Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) granting Sixth Schedule status to the hills was signed on December 6, 2005. 

“My father always felt betrayed by the Centre and the state government. They could not honour their own signatures (read the tripartite Sixth Schedule agreement),” he said, adding in the same breath: “That should leave the dialogue for Gorkhaland open.” 

After the meeting, Mann was not available to explain what he meant by dialogue for Gorkhaland. 

However, former Kurseong MLA and GNLF central committee member N.B. Chhetri said the party president was putting the onus of implementing the Sixth Schedule agreement on the Central and state  governments, failing which the hill outfit would have no other choice than to demand Gorkhaland. 

“It is for the Centre and the state government to implement the Sixth Schedule agreement. We will talk with them. We want to know how serious they are about implementing the pact. If the need arises, we will not hesitate to demand Gorkhaland,” said Chhetri.

During his 29-minute speech on the Mela Ground in front of about 6,000-7,000 party supporters, Mann also said: “Let both the agreements be scrapped. Or hands will be freed.” 

The GNLF’s stated position is granting of Sixth Schedule status for the autonomy of the Darjeeling hills. Till that happens, the party wants the DGHC, which was repealed after the GTA was formed in 2012, to be restored.

Leaders who spoke before Mann also iterated the party’s demand for DGHC and Sixth Schedule. Chhetri, the central committee member, said it was a fallacy to claim that the Sixth Schedule Bill that was introduced in Lok Sabha in November 2007 had been scrapped for good. 

“Like the women’s reservation bills that were introduced in Parliament on many occasions, the Sixth Schedule Bill can similarly be introduced again,” he told party workers, who had gathered from different parts of the hills to celebrate its 26th foundation day as Gorkhaland Namakaran Ghosna Diwas.

In a reply to a query under the Right to Information Act, the Union home ministry had said in 2013 that the draft bills for including the Darjeeling hills in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution had “lapsed with the dissolution of the 14th Lok Sabha” and the bills “cannot be implemented”. 

The 14th Lok Sabha was dissolved in 2009.