Drive to expunge GL billboards foiled

Siliguri, Nov. 13: Following vehement resistance by the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha activists, the administration in Siliguri today had to backtrack from a pre-scheduled drive of expunging ‘Gorkhaland’ inscriptions from government properties at Dagapur area on the outskirts of Siliguri town.
The drive that was initiated from the Pachnoi River bridge at Dagapur at 11:30 am, had to be called off within an hour after a group of GJMM activists threatened to block the National Highway 55 (to Darjeeling) against the drive.

The GJMM resistance caused tension in the area even as a reasonable number of police personnel were at the site to prevent any untoward incident.

Finding the situation fast slipping out of hand, the Siliguri executive magistrate Ms Sumita Pradhan supervising the drive contacted her higher authorities and the drive was ultimately called off and thus normalcy was restored in the area.

On questioning, the SDO Siliguri Mr Sharad Diwvedi said that the initiative had been ‘temporarily put on hold due to some logistical problem and also in view of the law and order situation that surfaced today'.

“In a meeting convened by the civil administration last Tuesday, representatives of several government departments had conceded to depute staffs for the expunging drive to be carried out from Dagapur to Sukna and the administration was only to assist them in the process.

But astonishing enough apart from the PWD-National Highway staffs, none from any other office turned up today. Yet the drive was initiated from the Panchnoi bridge but had to be aborted later due to the GJMM resistance,” Mr Diwvedi said.

Adding further, the SDO said that he has convened a meeting of fellow civil officials tomorrow to review the whole situation and decide whether to launch the drive once again. The GJMM Siliguri sub-division unit secretary Mr Madhusudhan Thapa on the other hand, clarified that they would resist the administration's ‘undemocratic move’ at any cost. “Following the honorable Governor's request, our party has dropped the program of inscribing ‘Gorkhaland’ on government office signboards in the district and we are allowing the authorities to reinstate ‘West Bengal’ on them. But it is totally undemocratic that taking advantage of this, the administration is now trying to wipe off our graffiti and removing flags, banners etc, which we will not allow at any cost,” Mr Thapa said.