MLA Zimba seeks Padma award for Subash Ghisingh

SNS, Darjeeling, 28 January 2022: Darjeeling's BJP MLA Neeraj Zimba today demanded that the late Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) leader, Subash Ghisingh, be conferred the Padma award next year.

In a letter he has sent to Darjeeling MP Raju Bista, Mr Zimba has said that Ghisingh had left a mark in the history of Indian Gorkhas.

"I remember having spoken to him about almost three years ago about taking initiatives for the recognition of the contribution of Subash Ghisingh. On behalf of the people of Darjeeling Hills, I have requested our MP seeking his intervention, to take necessary initiatives for nomination and recommendation of Subash Ghisingh for the Padma Awards in the comingbyear," Mr  Zimba said in a press release today.

"Subash Ghisingh is a towering personality of the Gorkha community and is well known for his social, political, and literary contributions and spreading it's awareness among the Indian Gorkhas," Mr Zimba says in the letter, adding that Ghisingh had also published over 22 books.

Ghisingh, who was born in the year 1935 and died in 2015, was the president of the GNLF and is considered the one who first coined the word 'Gorkhaland.'An undisputed leader in Darjeeling hills for more than 20 years as the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) chairman, he is mostly known for spearheading a bloody agitation for a separate state of Gorkhaland in the mid- eighties. The agitation then ended with the formation of the DGHC in 1988. Later in 2001, he also raised the demand for including the hills in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.