Thaw, as Mamata meets GJM leaders

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Kolkata, September 12

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today conceded some of the demands raised by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) while giving assurance that the important demand of a tripartite meeting involving the Centre would be taken up in the next round of dialogue.

The Chief Minister, while talking to reporters after her scheduled meeting with representatives of political parties from Darjeeling Hills, said had there been an elected body in place at the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), it would have been possible to hold a tripartite meeting, since there was such a provision. But the elected members of the GTA have all resigned following which a bureaucrat has been appointed as its administrator. Citing this, Banerjee said the state government would explore what legal provisions were there for holding a tripartite meeting in the absence of an elected GTA.

Conceding that all the representatives of the political parties from the hills who participated in today’s meeting wanted a tripartite meeting, Banerjee said the issue would be addressed in the next round of dialogues that would take place in Kolkata on October 16. The CM had the first meeting with Gorkha politicians at Kolkata on August 29 which was followed up with the meeting held at Siliguri today.

After the August 29 meeting, Binay Tamang, GJM coordinator, has announced suspending the ongoing “bandh” in force in the hills since mid-June. But GJM supremo Bimal Gurung expelled Tamang and his loyalist Anit Thapa from GJM and had announced that the shutdown would continue.

Binay Tamang and Anit Thapa took part in the meeting today along with three others as representatives of GJM. While the MLAs were accommodated as “people’s representatives”, two other delegates named by the Gurung faction of GJM were kept out of the meeting.