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Dear Friends,

Due to registration problem with WordPress.com, commentators were not able to register and comment. It seems we need an upgrade. Until this is not taken care of commentators can comment without registering themselves. New commentators will however have to have their  first comment approved.

Regs

Barun

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Dear friends,

Greetings from Darjeeling!

As you must have noticed most of our commentators have been abusing the forums and pursuing personal attacks. In order to root out these abusers I have decided to allow only serious deliberators and commentators on the site. In order to comment you will now have to register and enter password.

With best wishes and regards

Barun

Today’s Wallpaper

Beacon Online’s Exclusive Wallpaper – Kalimpong Monastery

Zang Dhok Palri Monastery at Durpin Dara (Hill)

SDF condemns news report; says it had nothing to do with the stopping of the sale of a local daily

GANGTOK, May 08: The Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) party has condemned the news report published in one of the local vernacular dailies, which had stated the alleged involvement of SDF Cheli Morcha in stopping the sale of a local Nepali daily today.

A party press release states that the said news report was entirely unfounded, baseless and misguiding.
It further states that the “self-created issue” is a conspiracy to tarnish the image of the SDF party.
Refuting the allegation, the party in a press release has said that none from the Cheli Morcha was present on the day nor anyone had called Cheli Morcha on the pretext of giving benefits as reported in the newspaper.”

Gorkha group demands full statehood for Darjeeling Hills

The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), which is spearheading a movement for a separate Darjeeling Hill state, Friday submitted a memorandum of demands to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

‘I have received a written statement from GJM specifying their demands and expectations from the government Friday morning. It is good to know that they too want to sort out the issue through mutual discussion,’ Bhattacharjee told reporters at a press conference here Friday.

‘After going through the details of their demands, I will talk to the ministry concerned over the issue. I am sure we will soon arrive at a permanent solution,’ Bhattacharjee said, adding: ‘The relationship and communication between the hills and plains have always been peaceful and constructive.’

‘The allround development of neither the hills nor the plains is possible unless there is harmony and peace among the residents,’ he stressed.

GCPA plans to boycott rural polls

COOCH BEHAR, May 9: The Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association (GCPA) plans to boycott the panchayat polls. The GCPA, which does not consider Cooch Behar as a part of West Bengal feels that inclusion of the district in the West Bengal panchayat polls is an ‘unconstitutional’ act. Nearly 40 GCPA supporters were arrested from the town recently while campaigning in favour of the formation of a separate state of Cooch Behar and for urging the people to boycott the panchayat elections. The GCPA leadership has come up with billboards in all the gram panchayat areas of Cooch Behar district and other areas under the proposed ‘Greater Cooch Behar’ state. In addition to heralding the territory of the Greater Cooch Behar state, the GCPA leadership is using the hoardings to welcome visitors to the proposed state. The map includes the north Bengal districts and a few districts of Assam in its territory.

Demanding the inclusion of Cooch Behar as a C-category state of India the GCPA leadership said that the West Bengal government had no right to impose any election upon the people in the area, which the GCPA considered as the Greater Cooch Behar state. Reacting to the GCPA move the district Left Front convenor Mr Chandi Pal said that the GCPA was trying to mislead the common people with such posters and maps. “The administration should take steps to stop these things,” Mr Pal said . The police said they had already started removing the anti-election posters and hoardings from different areas in the district. The GCPA leadership is also annoyed with the Greater Cooch Behar Democratic Party (GCDP), a faction of the GCPA as the GCDP is contesting in the panchayat elections in Cooch Behar district. Denying any relation with the GCDP, the GCPA leadership termed them as ‘opportunists.’ [The Statesman]

End Asok-Bimal duel, says Trinamul

SILIGURI, May 9: The Trinamul Congress has demanded an end to the continuing verbal duel between the state urban development minister, Mr Asok Bhattacharya and the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha chief Mr Bimal Gurung. “This verbosity has been vitiating the already emotionally charged atmosphere both in the Darjeeling Hills and the plains,” the party said. Mr Partha Chatterjee, the leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and Trinamul Congress leader, said that when all the parties were expected to exercise restraint in view of the deteriorating condition in the Hills, Mr Bhattacharya and Mr Gurung were indulging in a ridiculous verbosity. “The state government, on one hand, is calling the GJMM for dialogue and Mr Asok Bhattacharya is, on the other hand, queering the pitch by calling the GJMM leaders anti-national terrorists. This must end,” Mr Chatterjee said. [The Statesman]

Six arrested for attack on GJMM

SILIGURI, May 9: The police in Siliguri have arrested six youths in connection with the 2 May attack on Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha supporters at Hospital More in Siliguri. DYFI activists were allegedly involved in the incident.  The arrests were made through the past three days. One of the six accused was arrested on 6 May, another four the very next day and the sixth accused was nabbed last night.  “We could identify the six accused from the newspaper photographs and news channel footages. We hope to book a few more assailants very soon,” Mr Rajesh Yadav, ASP, Siliguri said. The ASP furter informed that the political affiliations of the arrested youths, if any, were being investigated. Though the police did not disclose the names of the arrested individuals, it was learnt that the youths were lifted from the slums of Bagrakote, Tikiapara, Matangini Colony. It may be mentioned that the GJMM in its Siliguri rally on 7 May, had issued a seven-day deadline for the arrest of the assailants of its supporters. [The Statesman]

28-minute show on zoo life and care

Alipurduar, May 9: A what-goes-behind-the-stage documentary on the Darjeeling zoo is expected to give visitors an idea of how a red panda is looked after in captivity or what the Tibetan wolf eats. [Inset: A Tibetan wolf at the Darjeeling zoo that has been filmed by the documentary makers]

The 28-minute film, Mission Survival for a New World, produced by the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling, covers a lot of endangered species that it houses: from the Siberian tiger to the snow leopard.

Even the injured and the sick animals, usually kept away from the prying eyes of visitors, will be seen in the film. The focus, in this case, is the special care extended by vets and how in an emergency, the authorities contact their counterparts in other zoos to help them out.

The film comes close on the heels of the Darjeeling zoo bagging the “excellent management of animals” award of the Central Zoo Authority.

Cry for aid as storm toll goes up

May 9: The death toll in the storms that lashed north Bengal districts yesterday has risen to 13, with two more persons who had been struck by lightning in Malda succumbing to injuries. The wind had also flattened over 3,000 huts and destroyed crops in several places. [Inset: A tree uprooted by the storm in Cooch Behar’s Ghughumari. (Main Uddin Chisti)]

Sudam Majhi, 50, and Khubitir Mondol, 22, of Nazirpur village in Manikchak died at the district hospital today.

The district magistrate of Malda, Chittaranjan Das, said a compensation of Rs 50,000 would be paid to the next of kin of each victim, if they produced the post-mortem reports. However, relatives of some of the victims had buried the bodies without the mandatory autopsy, police said.

In South Dinjapur, the hailstorm destroyed ready-to-harvest paddy on 7,500 hectares. The principal agricultural officer of the district, Lakshmikanta Mandi, said the crop loss would be Rs 20 crore.

Farmers’ wings of both the CPM and the RSP, however, put the estimate at Rs 50 crore and demanded compensation. Mandi said the figure could rise after he received a full report of the damage.

DHR/GOVERNMENT APATHY AGLORE!

The landslide that ripped apart the locomotive shed of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Darjeeling Station took place in 2007, nothing has as yet been done.

The above photo was taken the day the landslide took place. (in 2007)

This photo was taken a week ago

Photos by Barun Roy

The above news a Beacon Online exclusive was originally published on May 4, 2008.

The Telegraph today joined on the crusade and published an article on the same:

Darjeeling, May 9: The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway might have been declared a World Heritage by Unesco, but the Indian Railways has not been able to repair a loco shed almost one year after it was damaged in a landslide.

Delay in the repair of the loco shed at the Darjeeling station has hampered the functioning of the DHR to some extent as only two engines, instead of four, can be housed there for maintenance.

The shed had been covered with debris following a landslide on July 17 last year. The DHR authorities say the repair was delayed on account of the high amount quoted in bids.

“We had called for a tender in December but it had to be cancelled as the lowest bid for the work was twice the amount we had estimated,” DHR director Subrata Nath said.

Soft on talks, tough on CM

Siliguri, May 9: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is open to the idea of a dialogue with the chief minister but will be happy if the Centre was involved in the process.

“We do not mind a one-to-one with him, although what we actually want is a tripartite meeting with the state and Central governments,” said Binay Tamang, the media and publicity secretary of the Morcha.

The Morcha leader, however, added that the chief minister expressing his desire to the media to sit with us alone was not enough. “He has to write to us officially.”

In Calcutta, Bhattacharjee confirmed that he has “got a letter from those presently agitating in the hills”.

“Let me first discuss it with my ministers and then I will talk about it. We don’t want to make any distinction between the hills and the plains. We want peace to prevail in Darjeeling,” Bhattacharjee told journalists. Last week, he had told a private news channel that the people of the hills should come forward with their demands.

Alleging a communication gap within the government, Tamang said at the very beginning of the Morcha agitation, the party had sent communiqués to the state and central governments and also the chief minister with three demands.

The first two, the removal of Subash Ghisingh as caretaker administrator of the DGHC and the scrapping of the bill conferring Sixth Schedule status on the hills, were met. The third was the demand for Gorkhaland.

GNLF leader in line of fire

Siliguri, May 9: A GNLF leader was today kept confined to his house for over an hour for claiming that a number of Subash Ghisingh’s supporters had been requested to attend the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha rally at Indira Gandhi Maidan on Wednesday.

To protest against the claim, more than 100 Morcha supporters today demonstrated in front of Rajen Mukhia’s house at Panighata Bazaar near Naxalbari, around 40km from Siliguri. They also kept him confined for over an hour.

Mukhia had said yesterday: “The Morcha leaders here insisted on taking a large number of people to the meeting and requested us to tell our supporters to attend the rally. We in turn told many residents that they could go if they wanted to.” Today, he said “1,500 people from Panighata had attended the rally in 22 vehicles”.

Mukhia’s claim irked the Morcha and this morning when the GNLF leader was organising a rally at Panighatta Tea Estate, he was pelted with stones. “I was rescued by the police.”

Indra Kumar Pradhan, the convener of the Panighata-Naxalbari committee of the Morcha, said the situation returned to normal after Mukhia “apologised”. Mukhia said around 100 GNLF supporters had attended the rally. [The Telegraph]

Arrest retort to deadline – Cops pick up six based on video footage, Morcha tags them scapegoats

Siliguri, May 9: Police have picked up six persons for their alleged involvement in the attacks on Gorkha Janmuki Morcha supporters here last week, but Bimal Gurung’s party has tagged the arrests an “eyewash”.

The police, however, refused to divulge the political affiliation of the arrested youths. “We arrested them on the basis of video footage and photographs of the incidents that we procured from various sources,” said Rahul Srivastava, the superintendent of police, Darjeeling. [Inset: Bimal Gurung (right) at Pintail Village on Thursday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo]

Gurung, the Morcha president, had set a deadline of seven days for the Darjeeling district administration within which the accused — three CPM leaders were named in an FIR — were to be arrested failing which 10,000 party supporters would come down to Siliguri for a protest meet.

Bird flu back, this time near Siliguri

Siliguri, May 9: The Darjeeling district administration today confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in a village 22km north of Siliguri, almost two months after the H5N1 virus was detected in neighbouring Jalpaiguri.

Poinikumari in Kurseong subdivision is 60km from Sonpukur and Saheber Kamath villages of Jalpaiguri, which was affected. [Inset:  Chickens roam about in the backyard of a house in Poinikumari on Friday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo] 

In Poinikumari, 283 chicken have died since April 27. “Once we came to know about the deaths, medical teams from the animal resource development (ARD) department were dispatched. Samples were first sent to the Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Calcutta and then to High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal. The Bhopal laboratory has confirmed that the samples have tested positive for bird flu,” said Rajesh Pandey, the district magistrate of Darjeeling.

The report from Bhopal arrived this afternoon and last deaths were reported on May 4. This is the first time that the bird flu has been reported in Darjeeling district ever since the state was plagued by the communicable disease about six months ago. Besides Jalpaiguri, the virus had been detected in three other north Bengal districts— South Dinajpur, Cooch Behar and Malda.

“We have identified three panchayats under Siliguri sub-division and one in Kurseong where culling operations will begin tomorrow,” Pandey said.

Bird flu near Siliguri

Siliguri, May 9: The Darjeeling administration today confirmed an outbreak of bird flu north of Siliguri, a little more than a month after the H5N1 virus was detected in neighbouring Jalpaiguri.

Poinikumari in Kurseong subdivision is 60km from Sonpukur and Saheber Kamath villages of Jalpaiguri, where birds were culled earlier.

At Poinikumari, 283 chickens have died since April 27. “The High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal has confirmed that the samples have tested positive for bird flu,” said Darjeeling district magistrate Rajesh Pandey.

“We have formed 25 teams, which will cull 18,000 poultry birds,” said Pandey.

The areas where birds will be culled are about 20km from Siliguri town. A control-room has been set up in Pintail, 4km from Siliguri.

Besides Jalpaiguri, the avian influenza virus had been detected in three other north Bengal districts earlier — South Dinajpur, Cooch Behar and Malda. [The Telegraph]