June 9: Thousands cut short their holidays and scrambled out of the Darjeeling hills today after the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha suddenly called an indefinite shutdown from tomorrow and asked tourists to clear out “as soon as possible”.
The 1pm announcement immediately caused a shortage of taxis, forcing men, women and children to climb into jam-packed buses and lorries, some finding room only on bus roofs.
Even Sikkim saw an exodus, its government advising tourists to leave since road links with Siliguri are expected to be snapped once the Morcha bandh starts at 6am tomorrow.
“We have no enmity with tourists, but since we are starting a greater agitation, we request all of you to leave as early as possible,” Ishamani Pakhrin, Morcha office secretary, announced in Bengali at busy Chowk Bazar, sparking chaos.
“I don’t know what to do,” said a frantic Calcuttan, Aloke Mukherjee, as he hunted for a vehicle.
“This isn’t fair to those of us who have come from faraway places. They should have at least given us one full day to leave,” said Jogesh Kumar from Chhattisgarh.
Although the Morcha mentioned no deadline, the 10,000 tourists in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong knew they had to be out by 6am.
Joginder Sandhu of Chandigarh, who had arrived yesterday and planned to spend a week in Darjeeling and Gangtok, found a cab at 7pm. “The taxis are charging Rs 4,500 today; yesterday we paid only Rs 1,200,” he said.
Jalpaiguri district magistrate R. Ranjit, who has written a book on hill tourism, calculated the loss to the sector. Assuming the number of tourists to be 8,000 on any day during the peak season, he said: “Given the average expenditure of about Rs 1,000 a day per head, the loss would be Rs 80 lakh daily, as I had estimated in 2003-2004 when I researched for the book.”
Hotel owners, who said they were not charging any cancellation fees, grumbled that Morcha president Bimal Gurung had promised not to hurt the industry with his agitation.
Gurung sounded uncompromising today: “We’ll only think of lifting the strike if the Centre calls us for statehood talks. We are not ready to discuss any other issue, and the invitation must come from the Centre, but we are not averse to having the state government at the talks.”
Outside the hills, there would be rail rokos and highway blockades in areas the Morcha considers part of “Gorkhaland”, which include the Terai, Siliguri and the Dooars. These programmes are unlikely to have much impact.
In Siliguri, another struggle began as thousands descended from the hills. Raj Basu, a tour operator, said he had called up at least 20 hotels for his 25 clients who were heading down from Sikkim. “There are no rooms. I’m now calling up my friends and relatives to see if they have extra rooms.”
In case all the tourists can’t get out by 6am tomorrow, the administration would “see what can be done”, Darjeeling DM Rajesh Pandey said.
“We have to do everything to ensure the safe transit of the tourists,” home secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti said in Calcutta. “The indefinite strike is a grave issue and must be dealt with urgently.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment