Student rally on Saturday

Darjeeling, Nov. 5: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has directed its student’s wing to hold a rally here on Saturday to strengthen its Gorkhaland movement.

“The demand for separation (from Bengal) is 101 years old. We do not know much about politics, nor are we for any chair. We want Gorkhaland and we will not let the movement to get derailed by some people who are working as agents for the Bengal government. The students will come out to the streets to stop these agents,” said Keshav Raj Pokhrel, the secretary of the Gorkha Janmukti Vidyarathi Morcha.

Kismat Chhetri, the president of the Vidyarthi Morcha, said they were expecting more the 15,000 students from across the Darjeeling sub-division to participate in the rally.

Although the route of the Saturday’s rally has not yet been revealed, sources said the procession is likely to start from Chowrastha and is expected to go past the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League’s office on Ladenla Road.

Asked to comment on the Morcha’s Saturday rally, many teachers in the hill town kept mum.

Pokhrel justified the students’ participation in the rally. “Gorkhaland is more than a political issue. It is an issue of our identity and an aspiration of an entire community,” he said. The Vidyarthi Morcha leaders will meet here tomorrow to finalise its future programmes. “We will try not to disturb major examinations, like the selection test for Class X and XII,” said Pokhrel.

This is not the first time that the Morcha is taking students’ help to press for its statehood demand. On July 5, a students’ rally was organised here after a 10-day long relay hunger strike. The party had taken a group of 500 students to Calcutta for another rally on September 1.