Hill People Rally Against Ghising’s Threats

B Prasant

MORE than five thousand people attended a rally held at chowk bazaar in Darjeeling town on January 18.  Four political parties, the CPI(M), the Gorkha league, the CPRM, and the breakaway fraction of the GNLF led by C K Pradhan called the rally and at a rather short notice. 

The response of the people showed that the masses were quite bitter at the manner the GNLF, or what remained of it, was running affairs at the hill council.  The rallying call of the four parties was pro-people development and harmony in the hills.  The rally was bigger than the meeting addressed by Subhas Ghising a week back at Darjeeling.

Addressing the people who had convened in large numbers ignoring the bitter cold sweeping the hills, S P Lepcha, secretary of the Darjeeling district unit of the CPI(M), said that the hill council must be made to function and in a democratic manner in order to ensure a continuum of developmental activities to take place in the hills.

Lepcha said that under GNLF tutelage, the present hill council had lost direction and had become a moribund organisation despite the help it had received from the state LF government.  Lepcha demanded that elections to the hill council must be held in due time and described the separatist threats emanating from Ghising as anti-people and counter-democratic.

Saon Rai and R P Pakhrin of the CPRM said that in a situation where the political outlook of the hill people had matured, the threats issued by Ghising would of no use. Bitterly critical of the GNLF, Rai and Pakhrin said that Ghising, who had been in hibernation for four years, had chosen to come out with threats and divisive slogans just when the hill council polls were due. The CPRM, they said, demanded that elections to the hill council should be held in time.

Madan Tamang of the Gorkha League who presided over the rally declared that the hill people had long seen through the tissue of lies that Ghising had spun over the years.  Sharply criticising Ghising for his penchant for calling for a CBI probe into the killing of GNLF councillors, Tamang said that a CBI enquiry would hardly help Ghising, as ‘everybody knew the circumstances leading to the killings.’

D K Pradhan, leader of the breakaway faction of the GNLF said that Ghising, desperate to avoid what was a certain defeat in the hill council polls, was going back to his favourite ploy of separatism and counter-democratic moves. The state government must ensure that the hill council elections were held freely and peacefully. He said that Ghising had wasted crores of rupees that the state government had allocated for the developmental work of the Darjeeling district, and the GNLF leader must face the wrath of the electorate in the coming polls.