AUTONOMY CARROT FOR HILLS

FROM THE TELEGRAPH

Calcutta, June 14: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said the hills people’s grievances about lack of development were genuine, and offered to replace the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council with another body with more powers if the demand for a separate state was dropped.

“I am ready to discuss further autonomy for the hills, except a separate Gorkhaland. We don’t mind if the (Gorkha Janmukti) Morcha, which has rejected the DGHC, wants us to scrap it and replace it with a more autonomous mechanism of self-rule, of course with the approval of the Centre,” the chief minister told a Left Front meeting.

Bhattacharjee received support for his stand on Gorkhaland from foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee. “The central government does not want to support a separate state in Bengal,” the Congress minister said here. “If the Morcha wants to have talks with us, we are ready. But they have to come without preconditions.”

Morcha chief Bimal Gurung said the fact that Mukherjee himself had not set any precondition was “encouraging”.

“We are most willing to hold talks with the Centre,” said Gurung. “We believe that Pranab Mukherjee has not set any preconditions and we can definitely discuss a lot of issues, including Gorkhaland.”

He had yesterday rejected the chief minister’s offer of talks on June 18, a day after the all-party meet on Darjeeling.

Bhattacharjee told the Left allies that Mukherjee’s stand was the same as what Union home minister Shivraj Patil had told him. “The Centre is also opposed to Gorkhaland but prefers a cautious approach in dealing with the movement in view of the sensitive demographic composition and strategic location of the hills,” he said.

The state would consult the Centre on tackling the hill agitation, unlike the Gorkhaland movement of the eighties, he added.

Bhattacharjee defended the decision not to invite the Morcha to the all-party talks on June 17. Later, CPM state secretary Biman Bose said: “The Morcha is not a political party but a part of the movement only. (Subash) Ghisingh or his GNLF were not invited to the 1985 all-party meeting when the original Gorkhaland movement began.”

The violence in Siliguri also figured, with the RSP’s Kshiti Goswami and the Forward Bloc’s Hafiz Alam Sairani criticising local CPM leaders — hill affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya in particular — for “inciting the backlash against the Morcha’s bandh in the plains”.

According to some Left partners, Bose “admitted the party’s mistake in handling the situation in Siliguri”.

The Left Front has passed a resolution “condemning the unwanted incidents detrimental to the unity of the hills and the plains”, Bose said.