GTA an obstacle on the road to Gorkhaland, says Mahendra P. Lama

YOWAN MOTHAY | EOI | KALIMPONG | MAY 12, 2022 : Gorkhaland Territorial Administration is an obstacle in the way of a separate state of Gorkhaland, former vice chancellor of Sikkim University Mahendra P. Lama said in a news conference in Kalimpong on Thursday. 

He said reactivating it would be fatal for the Darjeeling hills. It may be mentioned that the West Bengal Government plans to hold the GTA elections in coming June. Since the statehood agitation of 2017, GTA is being run by an administrator. 

He said in the name of Permanent Political Solution, the State Government wanted to give the GTA. 

The formation of an autonomous state within a state under Article 244A of the Constitution was one of the options under PPS, but Lama said a separate state of Gorkhaland should be the only goal. 

He said the Citizen’s Forum, which held a meeting in Darjeeling earlier this week on this issue, was working on a strategy of requesting legislatures of different Gorkha – inhabited states to pass resolution in support of Gorkhaland and hand them over to the Centre. 

The Citizen’s Forum was also putting pressure on the Centre to form a separate state of Gorkhaland. According to Lama, the Darjeeling hills had been experiencing “extremely dark times since 2000.” The only way out of this seemed to form a separate state of Gorkhaland.