New top body for Morcha

Binay Tamang speaks to reporters in Darjeeling on
Tuesday. (Suman Tamang)

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, June 28: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today put in place a new body called the central working committee that would be the highest policy-making wing of the party at it's first major meeting after the recent Assembly polls.

Till date, the highest body of the hill party was the 87-member central committee.

"We have decided to form a 29-member central working committee that will decide policy and organisational matters. The changes have been brought about to further strengthen the party," Binay Tamang, the assistant general secretary of the Morcha, told reporters here today.

Most central committee members were present at the meeting.

The Morcha has made several other changes and appointed leaders from Kalimpong and Kurseong subdivisions to important posts to make the party more inclusive.

This year, the Morcha had to face tough competition from rival parties in Kalimpong and the hill party's victory margin in the subdivision came down from around 1 lakh in the 2011 Assembly polls to around 11,000.

The Morcha's victory margin in Darjeeling and Kurseong seats also went down by nearly 50 per cent this time.

"We had three vice-presidents in the party and today, we decided to appoint L.B. Rai from Mirik as another vice-president," Tamang said.

Till now, Tamang and Jyoti Kumar Rai were the Morcha's two assistant general secretaries. Today, the party decided to appoint R.B.Bhujel (Kalimpong), Bimal Darjee (Kurseong) and S.N. Ghisingh (Mirik) as assistant general secretaries as well.

The Morcha also formed a seven-member legal advisory committee today.

"We already have legal teams in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong and we have formed the advisory committee to advise those," said Tamang.

For better co-ordination, the Morcha has decided to attach two or three co-ordinators to each of the party's 23 frontal organisations, like the Nari Morcha and Yuva Morcha.

"All co-ordinators are from the central committee," said Tamang.

According to Morcha sources, at the meeting today, the leaders discussed at length the party's performance in the recently-held Assembly elections and there was an agreement on the need to make the organisation more cohesive.

"The effort is to activate all leaders. Moreover, given the number of frontal organisations in the party, it was not possible to address the issues of all of them unless the party was decentralised," said a source.

Earlier, Morcha leaders had raised complaints that only a handful leaders would take decisions for the party.

"Let us see if things change. Although, old habits are difficult to change," said a Morcha central committee leader.