A day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Gorkha issues would be resolved without bifurcating West Bengal, the senior BJP leader on Wednesday announced that all the “false cases” against the Gorkha leaders would be dropped once his party came to power in West Bengal.
Shah, who was unable to reach Lebong in Darjeeling after his chopper failed to land due to unfavourable weather conditions, addressed the gathering through a recorded video message.
“I am making another promise today. We will withdraw the false cases filed against the Gorkha leaders and workers. The tradition of filing false cases was started by (Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee to suppress the movement. It will be stopped,” Shah said.
“I will announce the development roadmap for the Darjeeling hills in my next public meeting,” he added. Shah is scheduled to hold the next public meeting in the hills at Sukna on April 21.
The Union Home Minister alleged that while his ministry took initiatives to resolve the demands of the people of the Darjeeling hills, they could not be addressed “due to the reluctance of the TMC government in the state”.
“…To resolve the problems of the Hills, I had called a tripartite meeting on three occasions. But no representative of the state government or Mamata Banerjee attended the meeting in Delhi. Finally, we thought that if she can’t come, we will go to Bengal. That is why we appointed an interlocutor, who will discuss with all of you. He (the interlocutor) also had gone to discuss the issues with Mamata Banerjee and her government representatives. But they did not give him time. Mamata does not want the patriotic Gorkhas living in the Hills to get justice. After the BJP government is formed in West Bengal on May 4, we will quickly resolve the problems of the hills and the Gorkhas under the Constitution,” he said.
“We will definitely solve the problems of the hills, the problems of the Gorkhas,” he added.
Last October, the BJP government at the Centre had appointed former Deputy National Security Advisor Pankaj Kumar Singh as its interlocutor to address the long-pending demands of the Gorkha community in the Darjeeling Hills. TMC leaders dubbed Singh’s appointment a “political gimmick” ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls to woo Gorkha voters, with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee shooting off a stern letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to voice her dissent.
In this election, the TMC formed a seat-sharing alliance with the Anit Thapa-led Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BJPM), a breakaway faction of Bimal Gurung’s GJM, and has left the Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Kurseong seats to its partner. The BJP, on the other hand, has yet again secured the support of Gurung, its former alliance partner in the hills.