Buddha taps Sonia to get Ghising on board

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is looking forward to support from UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to bring the Gorkha Nation...

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is looking forward to support from UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to bring the Gorkha National Liberation Front boss, Subash Ghising, under control. Trouble has been brewing in Darjeeling again with Ghising threatening to boycott the March hill council elections if his pending demands were not met.

And with emergency in neighbouring Nepal and reports of Maoists sneaking in, the state government is desperate to ensure that Ghising and his supporters do not let Darjeeling politics return to the state of unrest it went through in the eighties.

Tomorrow, Bhattacharya is scheduled to meet Sonia and urge her to prevail upon the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council chairman. Ghising has forged a bond with the Congress and the party won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat last year with active support from the GNLF.

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The West Bengal administration as well as the CPM think-tank believe that Congress is in the best position to influence Ghising’s thinking.

The meeting with Sonia is to be followed by a tripartite meeting at North Block between Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Ghising and Bhattacharya. But the West Bengal government is attaching greater significance to the chief minister’s appointment with Sonia. Their logic: It is difficult to get any commitment out of Ghising at these formal deliberations. The last bipartite meeting between Bhattacharya and the DGHC chairman made little headway.

The hill council elections, according to legal provisions, would have to be completed by March 25. The Left Front is attaching great significance to the democratic process. But Ghising is insistent that his demands, including his right ‘‘to control hill police’’ be handed over to him.

Sources here say the Congress does not want to alienate Ghising because, till now, he has not really hobnobbed with Maoists. In the fast changing scenario in the hills, Darjeeling is poised delicately. There have been reports of the Nepal Maoists establishing links with the North Bengal-based Nepalese National Democratic Front of India and the Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist, Leninist, Maoist).

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Reports have indicated that at a meeting with King Gyanendra in 2004, Ghising had openly advocated the need for Emergency in Nepal. But Maoists have been sneaking into the Himalayan subdivisions of West Bengal. Last October, three Maoists were arrested from Panitanki on the Indo-Nepal border.

Ghising renews demand

KOLKATA

: On the eve of the tripartite meeting between the West Bengal government, the DGHC and the Centre scheduled for Thursday, GNLF leader and DGHC chairman Subhash Ghising on Wednesday revived his demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland saying former CM Jyoti Basu had promised it. ‘‘In 1988, Basu promised we would get Gorkhaland in due course,’’ said Ghising in Darjeeling. — ENS

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