“Stock-up ladder for months! Gorkha Police will monitor people! Vehicles must bear GL plate” Bimal Gurung

Gurung addresses the gathering at Kalimpong’s Town Hall. (Chinlop Fudong Lepcha)

Kalimpong, June 8: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is planning a fresh round of agitation for which the people of the hills have been asked to stock up their larder by June 15 with enough food to last two months.

Promising to bring Gorkhaland by 2010, Morcha president Bimal Gurung said: “I finished off Ghisingh in three months. I achieved 100 per cent success with the (stalling of) the Sixth Schedule status. They were the only stumbling blocks on the way to (achieve) Gorkhaland.”

“If no development took place for 21 years (from the time the DGHC accord was signed in 1988), another two years will not hurt much,” Gurung added.

The Morcha also announced that it would go ahead with its programme of changing the number plates of vehicles in the hills from WB as in West Bengal to GL or Gorkhaland. A force of the “Gorkhaland Police” too will be raised soon.

Gurung who was addressing the members of the Janmukti Chalak Mahasangh, an organisation of drivers, at Town Hall here today said it was important to send across the message that “this is our homeland and we are free to make our own choices”.

“If we can’t implement this (the new number plates), we might as well forget about Gorkhaland,” the Morcha leader said.

Asked if practical problems like insurance claims — if the vehicles were not confiscated by police — would not come in the way of executing what is essentially a non-cooperation movement, Gurung said he did not anticipate any such problem. “It is our home (land), and we alone are responsible for our actions,” the Morcha leader said. The party is banking on the fact that in the hills it will be almost impossible for the police to arrest everyone — the number would be around 20,000 — who owns a car.

Some party members have already devised a plan to avoid trouble with the law. “The practical thing would be to keep two number plates: one bearing GL and the other WB. We can switch them depending where we are driving,” said a member.

The Morcha president said the “Gorkhaland police” would be ready by the end of this month. He, however, added that the force would not wield either guns or khukuris, but would instead be used to “monitor” the people.