GJM Supporters Join GNLF in Kurseong: GJM under Double Attack.

Chilauney Dhura (Kurseong), March 17: If it’s the Trinamool Congress in the Dooars, the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) has started haunting the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) in Darjeeling hills.

   

And Sunday provided a shock for the GJM as many of its unhappy supporters at Chilauneydhura near Pankhabari left the party and took shelter of the GNLF. The former supporters of the GJM have also alleged the party for playing with the sentiments of hill people and raised pro Subash Ghisingh and pro Sixth Schedule slogans.

     

Thirty one supporters of GJM led by Saran Khawas a senior trade union leader of the GJM from Long View Tea Garden joined the GNLF today in presence of Nima Lama the GNLF convenor of Giddheypahar constituency. In a small programme organised at Kotidara, Chilauneydhura, the GJM supporters joined the GNLF and hailed Subash Ghisingh the GNLF president as their leader.

   

Lama said, “ People who had once supported the GJM blindfold have realized that the GJM is a party full of people with vested interest.” Hence many of them voluntarily decided to join the GNLF.

   

Talking to visiting reporters Khawas said, “Though I have nothing against the GJM, I have now realized that the Sixth Schedule is the only solution for the problems of hill people.” Khawas was with the CPI (M) before joining the GJM and was presently holding the post of vice president of the DTDPLU Kurseong unit.

    

At Garidhura also Lama claimed that more than 60 GJM supporters joined the GNLF today. Elsewhere at Sukna where people have started hoisting GNLF flags at their homes, the GNWO the women wing of the GNLF was formed under the leadership of Tshering Dahal.

       

Mahindra Chettri the GNLF convenor claimed that more and more people are joining the GNLF. “However we are not making hue and cry of it because we do not want peace of the hills to be disturbed.”  Chettri, who was in the CPI (M) for more than 25 years left the CPI (M) and joined the GNLF in November. Chettri had been pressing the CPI (M) to propagate the cause for the Sixth Schedule for the hills as it had once done. He left the party after the CPI (M) preferred to forget its earlier commitment in favour of the Sixth Schedule.

              

That more and more people from the hills are joining the GNLF has come as a big setback for the GJM whose might in the Dooars has already been challenged by the TMC.

 

The developments when the GJM’s relation with the state government is at its worst carries political significance as the party seems to be at the political crossroads thus remaining indecisive to finalize its next political agenda.

    

The expanding support base of the GNLF just before the party’s foundation day on April 5 can also be construed as a move to clear all the hurdles for the entry of its president Subash Ghisingh in the hills.

  

And the developments have really brought cheer in Ghisingh’s face. Ghisingh was forced to leave Darjeeling by the GJM in July 2008 after the centre kept in abeyance the bill to grant Sixth Schedule status to the hills. Since then he has been staying in Jalpaiguri.