Darjeeling, Nov 27: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has decided to organise candlelight rallies across “Gorkhaland” from tomorrow to press for an immediate second round of tripartite talks on the statehood demand.
The Centre, state and the Morcha delegation had agreed to hold another round of talks when they sat on September 8 for the first meeting.
“It was agreed then that the second meeting would be held in the third week of November. We now believe that both the Centre and the state government are conspiring to delay the talks,” said Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Morcha.
“We will hold candlelight rallies across Gorkhaland from 4.30pm tomorrow. We will continue to hold them till the next tripartite meeting is held,” said Giri, adding that his party would not tolerate conspiracies to delay talks.
The Morcha also made it clear that they would not attend any bipartite talks.
“The state government maintains that various modalities have to be worked out and that some more documents have to be submitted before the next meeting. We, however, want to make it clear that we will not sit for any bipartite meeting, as there is no need for such discussions. Our demand is Gorkhaland and nothing else,” said Giri.
Amit Kiran Deb, state chief secretary, is currently touring north Bengal but the Morcha has made it clear that they will not meet him before the tripartite talks.
The hill party said it has also written to the Union home secretary to arrange for the talks at the earliest.
“The state government has mixed up our demand with law and order problem. We would like to clarify that ours is not a law and order issue but a democratic demand and should not be treated as such,” said Giri.
Asok Mohan Chakrabarti, state home secretary, had recently said in Siliguri that the government was looking at deploying paramilitary forces in Jalpaiguri district soon. The Morcha has been demanding that Gorkhaland must include a sizeable portion of the neighbouring district too.
In another development, students of Southfield College today participated in a relay hunger strike organised by the Morcha's student wing at Chowrastha in support of Gorkhaland. The fast is expected to continue till the tripartite meeting is held.
The Morcha had announced yesterday that it would set up units in two colleges that had till now remained untouched by student politics. Southfield is one of them while the other is St Joseph’s or North Point.
With the Darjeeling Telephone Exchange starting to accept payment of bills since yesterday, the party said it had not allowed for any such relaxation and appealed to the people to stop payments.
Late in the evening, Morcha supporters from Singamari-Tukvar constituency brought out a rally to demand immediate holding of tripartite talks.
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