Deadline for GNLF chief

VIVEK CHHETRI

Bimal Gurung at Mirik on Sunday. (Suman Tamang)

Mirik, April 10: Bimal Gurung today said GNLF chief Subash Ghisingh’s “visa to the hills” would expire on April 18 and lakhs of people would converge on his residence if he did not leave by then.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which had organised a meeting beside the Mirik lake today, the same venue where Ghisingh had made his first public speech in more than three years yesterday, played heavily on the Gorkhaland sentiment, launching a vitriolic attack on the GNLF leader.

“You stay in foreign countries and your visa to the hills expires on April 18. Once the visa expires a person has to leave and if he does not, four to five lakh people will go to his place (to ensure it),” Gurung told the audience, whose number was nearly double the people who had come to listen to Ghisingh yesterday.

The Morcha chief was referring to Ghisingh’s trips to Myanmar, Vietnam, Bhutan, Cambodia and Thailand in the past three years.

The Morcha leader said he has come to Mirik, part of Kurseong constituency, immediately after Ghisingh to “purify” the place and advised the GNLF leader to “quietly leave” if he wanted peace in the hills. “At times I feel whether I should continue with our Gandhian movement,” Gurung warned his opponents.

Morcha leaders like B.K. Rai, a one-time close confidant of Ghisingh, reminded the crowd of the GNLF chief’s antics. “He considers himself to be a religious leader, philosopher, historian and almost everything rolled in one. He never allowed us to speak and only wanted us to hear his theories which ranged from the surface colour of Mars and Jupiter to the merger of planets,” said Rai.

The Morcha picked up on the statement Ghisingh made yesterday: that he had never demanded Gorkhaland and had only used the word as a “brahmaastra” (the ultimate weapon). Ghisingh had yesterday confessed that he had used the word “Gorkhaland” as pressure tactics to get an identity for the Gorkhas of the Darjeeling hills and had never meant it to denote a separate state.

“That leader has disrespected hundreds of martyrs who lost their lives in the agitation,” said the Morcha’s Kurseong candidate Rohit Sharma.

Hitting out hard at Ghisingh, the Morcha chief said it was time for the young generation to “learn about computers and the Internet and not about offering tongba (an alcoholic drink).” Ghisingh while campaigning for Sixth Schedule status had asked the people of the hills to offer tongba to the gods and goddesses.