Hamro Party to push ahead with statehood demand: HP had earlier decided that the chairman would be Mr Edwards

SNS, DARJEELING, 14 MARCH 22 : Hamro Party president Ajoy Edwards today said that they will form a common platform this August, which he said will take forward the demand of statehood.

Talking to reporters here, Mr Edwards said, "In the month of August, we will be organizing a three-day programme to mark Bhasa Diwas,' where we will be inviting representatives from Dehradun, Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, along with other places in the country. where Nepali language is spoken, and an agenda for statehood will be fixed. I feel that we should all take up the demand for statehood in a united manner under a collective leadership. I feel that this issue is related to our people spread everywhere."

"In the past when only one leadership from Darjeeling launched an agitation for a separate state, a settlement was reached due to vested interests of those who wanted to rule. The negotiations for statehood were weakened, which will not be the case when the demand is made by a collective leadership from everywhere," said Mr Edwards, whose party won the recently-concluded elections to the Darjeeling Municipality.

According to him, he was laying emphasis on the Nepali language as it was what united Nepalis across the country.

Mr Edwards also maintained that there shouId be an office in Kolkata and Delhi of this collective leadership and continuous exercise of creating a lobby and building pressure should be done, especially in Delhi.

'An agitation in the hills for this is of no use, as focus should be in creating public relations in support for the demand in Delhi. To take the demand forward, we feel that we should go forward diplomatically, constitutionally, creatively and in a non-violent manner," he said.

Mr Edwards also spoke on the Darjeeling civic body board formation and oath-taking of the new councilors to be held tomorrow.

"We have already laid out what we will be doing in the next 100 days, as announced earlier, among which include repair of the clock tower and keeping its building clean, different paper work like building plans and trade license to be processed fast, making public financial statements of the municipality every month, free ambulance service, coaching classes for competitive examinations and diagnostic clinics," said Mr Edwards.

Hlamro Party (HP) is forming the Municipality board here after winning 18 of the 32 wards. Sources, meanwhile, said that the party has picked Ritesh Portel as the chairman for the civic body and Yangzi Sherpa as the vice-chairperson.

The duo had won the elections in ward 31 and 25, respectively. The party had earlier decided that the chairman would be Mr Edwards himself, but he lost from ward 22 by just 5 votes.