Raju Bista wants PPS for the hills to be expedited

PRASHANT ACHARYA,  EOI, SILIGURI, FEBRUARY 13, 2023 : BJP M.P. of Darjeeling Raju Bista demanded in Lok Sabha on Monday that the process of a Permanent Political Solution under the Constitution for the hills be expedited and a three-tier panchayat election be held in the districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. 

Bista later told reporters: “I highlighted that there was a day when our region was very prosperous, boasting of the first municipality in a mountain region in Asia; the first mountain region in India to be industrialized (tea and cinchona); the first mountain region in the country to be connected by railways; the first hill region in Asia to get electricity connection, the first mountain region to have a school established. However ever since then, the Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars have suffered immense systematic deprivation under the succeeding governments in West Bengal.”

He said that he had informed the House that the system of governance was something non-existent in the Darjeeling hills. There was no panchayat system in place. Even though the Article 243M of the Constitution underlined the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council(DGHC) as a legal body, the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration was currently being run in its place. 

He said: “Our region has been overrun by illegal immigrants, while the indigenous communities are becoming marginalized by the day.

This poses a grave threat to our national security as well. I informed Parliament how our region had always been governed as a separate administrative unit. Prior to 1861 it was governed as a Non-Regulated Area, then from 1861-70 as Regulated Area, then again from1870-74 as Non-regulated Area, then from 1874-1919 as a Scheduled District, from 1919-1935 as a Backward Tract, from 1935-47 as a Partially Excluded Area, and eventually it was merged/absorbed into West Bengal through The Absorbed Areas (Laws) Act, 1954,implemented by 1956.”