ABGL expells Bharati and Pradhan

Rajeev Ravidas, TT, Kalimpong: The Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League has expelled its president Bharati Tamang and another senior member Laxman Pradhan for three years for allegedly violating party discipline.

Pratap Khati, the general secretary of the ABGL, said the decision to expel the duo has been taken at the party's politburo meeting on Friday. "Nine of the 15 members at the politburo met in Darjeeling on Friday and unanimously decided to expel Tamang and Pradhan for continuing to hobnob with the state government by ignoring the directives of the party," he said.

The two have been expelled for a period of three years. "We had earlier suspended both of them for attending the meeting called by the state government at Uttarkanya in Siliguri on September 12. However, despite the suspension, the duo again chose to attend the bipartite meeting in Calcutta on October 16," he said.

Khati said the meetings called by the state government were not to discuss the Gorkhaland demand, but to undermine it. "The state government has been suppressing the demand for Gorkhaland, which enjoys mass support. Our party had taken a clear stand against attending the meetings because Gorkhaland was not on the agenda. However, by attending the meetings, Tamang and Pradhan were found to have violated party discipline," he said.

Tamang and Pradhan had been suspended for three months and three years, respectively, on October 8 for attending the September 12 meeting. Two others, Biplav Rai and Pritivi Raj Subba, had also been suspended for one year. However, no further action was taken against Rai and Subba because they did not attend the October 16 meeting.

Contacted, Tamang said she was dumbstruck by the decision. "I have never heard of a secretary expelling the party president. I am dumbstruck," she said.

The ABGL is the oldest political party in the hills. Even though it does not command mass support at the moment, it was the principal party before the rise of Subash Ghisingh's Gorkha National Liberation Front in 1986.

Despite lacking popular support, Madan Tamang, the slain president of the ABGL, was largely credited with mobilising public opinion against bringing the Darjeeling hills under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

Madan was murdered in Darjeeling on May 21, 2010, by suspected Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters. After Madan's death, his wife Bharati, a former state government employee, was made the ABGL's president. Even though Bharati was not politically active, she was credited with keeping the party flocks together.