Historical British Map showing Darjeeling In Nepal

Indian Idol reignites Gorkhaland fire in Darjeeling

By Simon Denyer for Reuters

DARJEELING, India (Reuters) - India’s Darjeeling hills have come alive with fresh demands for a separate state within India for the Gorkha people, with protests threatening the area’s renowned tea and tourism industries.

Bizarrely, it was a television talent show, India’s version of “American Idol”, that lit the fire of Gorkhaland last September, two decades after the end of a insurgency among ethnic Nepalis in eastern India that left more than 1,200 people dead.

Frenzied canvassing for a local boy, ethnic Nepali or Gorkha policeman Prashant Tawang, metamorphosised into a political upsurge that has ushered in a new king of the hills.

Politician Bimal Gurung surfed the wave of ethnic pride unleashed by the TV contest and now is hoping it will carry his people towards Gorkhaland, the separate state carved out of West Bengal they have been demanding for many decades.

“This is the last fight,” the 44-year-old Gurung told Reuters in an interview in his party office in Darjeeling. “Till the last drop of my blood, I will fight this battle until we have a Gorkhaland state for the Gorkhas.”

The green, white and yellow flags of Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Gorkha People’s Liberation Front) fly from homes, shops and cars all around Darjeeling and nearby towns, bunting criss-crosses above the main streets.

The party’s symbols are the sun, the Himalayan mountains and two crossed kukris, the heavy, curved knife used by the famously fierce Gorkha soldiers from Nepal and India who have long fought with both British and Indian armies.

On a windy hilltop by the town of Kurseong, an obelisk crowned by a huge kukri commemorates the “martyrs” of the 1980’s insurgency, which formed the backdrop for Kiran Desai’s Booker Prize-winning novel “The Inheritance of Loss”.

But Gurung insists his will be a peaceful struggle.

“We want the right of self-determination within the Indian constitution,” he said. “We would not like to repeat the violence of 20 years ago. All protests will be held in a democratic and peaceful manner.”

Peace broke out in 1988 when Gorkha champion leader Subhash Ghising compromised with New Delhi, accepting limited autonomy under a new Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, which he then led.

Oops! We’ve built a road in Nepal

 

Darjeeling, March 18: The Darjeeling district authorities have constructed a kutcha road inside Nepal under the 100-day work scheme and the neighbour has accused India of encroaching into its territory.

The Himalayan kingdom has also complained of Indian troop movement within its boundary, prompting the district administration to stop work on the road immediately.

However, the 500-metre road inside Nepalese territory — across the border from Binnabari village in Khoribari, around 50km from Siliguri — is apparently the result of shoddy work by local officials.

No survey of the land was carried out before the residents of Binnabari started working on the road under the rural employment guarantee scheme, in mid-February.

Projects under this scheme are prioritised by villagers through panchayats before the block office sanctions funds. The block office usually gets a sub-assistant engineer to conduct a survey before launching a project.

The Rs 10-lakh project to connect Dangujot and Tarabari villages in the Binnabari panchayat area was almost complete when Nepalese officials complained about the movement of armed Indian personnel inside their territory.

The Sashastra Seema Bal, which has camps in both the Indian villages, sometimes patrols the small footpath, between pillars 116 and 117, recently turned into a road.

A probe ordered by the Darjeeling district administration revealed that the road was on Nepalese soil.

Minister loses rural votebank - - CPM worried about Asok’s redrawn constituency

Siliguri, March 18: A section of the CPM is worried that Asok Bhattacharya might lose a major chunk of his votebank as Champasari, Matigara and Mirik will no longer be part of the Siliguri MLA’s constituency. The urban development minister is known to enjoy support in the rural areas and in Mirik, which will now be a part of Kurseong.

“The change means that we will have to work hard in the urban areas,” said a party insider. In the 2006 Assembly elections, Bhattacharya had secured 1,17,943 votes and had won by a margin of 74,971. [Inset: Asok Bhattacharya: Sleepless nights ahead?]

According to the delimitation commission’s announcement, Matigara-Naxalbari has been made into a new Assembly constituency in Darjeeling district and reserved for Scheduled Castes. The change has raised the total number of Assembly constituencies in the district to six, the old five being Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Phansidewa, Siliguri and Kurseong.

The redrawn Siliguri constituency will now have only 33 wards of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (1-30 and 45-47).

In Jalpaiguri, the Kranti constituency has been obliterated and Dabgram-Phulbari, an unreserved Assembly constituency covering the outskirts of Siliguri, has been formed. It covers 14 SMC wards (31-44), Dabgram I and II and Phulbari I and II village panchayats of Rajganj block. The total number of constituencies in the Jalpaiguri district remains 12, with only two unreserved constituencies, the other being Alipurduar.

Bloggers hit by internet failure

Darjeeling, March 20: Bloggers from across the Darjeeling Hills were seriously hit with internet service failure. The Government of India, Public Sector undertaking Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, one of the major internet service provider have been unable to provide topnotch service as it has been elsewhere proclaiming. Though none of the officials were available for comment, some authorities seeking anonymity said that the problem has been due to the fibre optic cable being laid through Mirik. Much of the telephone lines itself are in most pitiful conditions and thus, the recurring service failures, one of the authorities said. While there have been a great deal of rise in online activities from around the hills especially with youths engaging in online portals, forums and blogging, professions news portals and blogs updated daily have been severely hit.