The general secretary of the CPRM and former Darjeeling MP R.B. Rai said: “If Bimal Gurung is saying that he is happy with the meeting with Mamata Banerjee, who is staunchly opposed to the division of Bengal, it is evident what is going on.”
Rai was referring to yesterday’s meeting between a Morcha delegation led by party president Gurung and the chief minister.
Gurung had said after the meeting that he was “very happy” with Mamata’s plans for the hills, adding that his team had come to congratulate her on her historic win.
Asked if the demand for Gorkhaland featured in the meeting, Gurung had yesterday said: “Gorkhaland talks can come later. This was more of a courtesy visit.”
Morcha rivals like the CPRM alleged that the “later” would never come.
“The Morcha had engaged itself with the state and the Centre on the interim set-up issue and they will continue to carry on the same dialogue when they meet again on June 6. The people of the hills had voted for the Morcha and they must seek an answer from the party,” said Rai.
“After eleven rounds of talks they will again start negotiations on the interim set-up (on a clean slate). The meetings are like climbing a slippery pole. The Morcha could never reach the top of such a pole,” said Rai.
The CPRM was also not satisfied with the chief minister holding talks with a party accused of masterminding the murder of ABGL leader Madan Tamang.
“The government should only start talks once they come clean through the legal process,” said Rai.
Tamang’s widow and the current president of the ABGL, Bharati Tamang, however, said she would not comment on yesterday’s meeting. “It was a meeting between them (Morcha) and the chief minister and we have nothing to say. The people must understand and I think they do,” she said, hinting that the Morcha’s tactics and its “false statehood” demand have been exposed.
Bharati said she would seek an appointment with Mamata in June.
Reacting to the allegations, Kurseong MLA and Morcha spokesperson Rohit Sharma today said the Gorkhaland issue had not been raised at Writers’ yesterday as it was the first meeting of the party with the chief minister.
“Since it was the first meeting and a courtesy call, we thought it was best not to talk about it. We will not budge from our statehood demand.”
Since Mamata’s victory, the hill party has been stressing that the new government will be given time to settle down before the Gorkhaland issue is broached.
In Darjeeling today, Gorkha Janmukti Yuva Morcha brought out a rally followed by a public meeting to demand the immediate production of Nickole Tamang, a central committee member of the Morcha who had “disappeared” from CID custody in Pintail Village on August 22, 2010. Nickole is an accused in the Madan murder case.
A central committee member of the Morcha, D.B. Gurung, who addressed the rally said: “We wanted the CBI inquiry but they are arresting people left and right without evidence and merely on suspicious. If Dipen Mallay had been involved he would have fled long time back. He told the CBI that he was not involved in the Madan Tamang murder case and that he was at Pokhriabong (about 30km from Darjeeling) on the day of the murder. But the team arrested him merely on suspicion.”
Mallay, the media and publicity secretary of the Yuva Morcha, was arrested by the CBI last week and has been taken to Calcutta for further interrogation on a 10-day remand.
The Morcha had been demanding a CBI inquiry into the murder. But Mallay’s arrest, the first by the central agency, has made the party wary.
On Friday, a day after Mallay’s arrest, the Morcha had set a 10-day deadline for the government to produce Nickole in court.
Hill observers said the move was aimed at deflecting the focus of the murder probe
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