Partial ‘permit’ slips for cut-off state

Gangtok, June 20: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is allowing students with identity cards, patients bound for Siliguri and LPG, diesel and petrol tankers to move in and out of Sikkim since yesterday evening.

The district collector of East Sikkim, Vishal Chauhan, said today that students were being issued slips by Morcha picketers at Rangpo and Melli, the two entry points to the Himalayan state.

“We are further appealing to them (Morcha) to allow the plying of vehicles carrying essential commodities to the state,” Chauhan told The Telegraph.

When contacted, Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri said there was never any restriction on the movement of students or patients from Sikkim.

In another appeal to the Centre, Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling today said NH31A should be kept open so that the economy of the state does not suffer. The highway is the lifeline of the state.

According to a government communiqué, Chamling has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to tell him that the people of the state were feeling isolated.

The Travel Agents’ Association of Sikkim (TAAS) has asked the Morcha to give them a window for the passage of tourists still stranded in Sikkim.

“We humbly appeal to the Morcha leadership to allow relaxations for tourist vehicles on alternate days so that holidaymakers stuck here can return home,” said TAAS president S. K. Pradhan here today.

According to TAAS sources, nearly 100 tourists are still stranded in Sikkim. They have been crowding the tourist information centre at Mahatma Gandhi Marg in Gangtok for updates on the situation in the Darjeeling hills and to find out when they can move out. The only means of transport from the state to the plains now is the helicopter service of the Sikkim Tourism Development Corporation. Today, however, only three of the six sorties could be made between Bagdogra and Gangtok because of bad weather.

The sources also said the usual daily single flight was booked for a month and the others were taking the additional flights.

Tourists like Ishwar Giri and his family of three from Delhi and Kabir Jalota from Ludhiana had arrived here on June 15, when everyone else was scurrying out of the state.

“We had no information of the closure of the highway when we drove out from Darjeeling. Now we are stranded,” said Jalota, who has two children with him.

“I do not know how I will catch the Air Deccan flight to Delhi from Bagdogra tomorrow. I had planned this holiday well in advance and now we are stuck,” Giri said.

Sikkim is silent on the Morcha’s demand for a separate state. The ruling Sikkim Democratic Front has refrained from taking any stand on Gorkhaland. Sources said the party had issued a whip to its ministers and legislators not to make any public statement on the issue.