Two top leaders of the Binay Tamang faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha have written separately to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee seeking their intervention for meeting two long-standing demands in the Darjeeling hills.
The letters are being viewed as the Tamang camp’s attempt to establish itself as the voice of the people in the hills in the run up to the Bengal polls.
Tamang has sent a letter to Modi seeking conferment of Scheduled Caste status on 11 communities in the hills. Anit Thapa, the general secretary of the faction and chairperson of the Board of Administrators of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, has sent a letter to Mamata requesting her to look into the demand raised by the contractual employees of GTA who want their jobs to be made permanent.
“This approach is balanced... They can now claim that they take up the issues of the hills not only with the Centre but also with the Trinamul government. Trinamul and the Tamang camp are allies,” said an observer.
In his letter to Modi, Tamang has mentioned that the demand to include the communities, namely, Bhujel, Gurung, Mangar, Newar, Jogi, Khas, Rai, Sunwar, Thami, Yakhha (Dewan) and Dhimal in the list of the ST according to The Constitutional (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 under Article 342 of the Indian Constitution had been raised time and again.
He has also pointed out that back in 2016, a committee was formed by the Union ministry of tribal affairs to look into the demand but what it did thereafter was not known to the people in the hills.
For the past few years, the issue was time and again raised by hill parties before the BJP MPs who have been representing Darjeeling since 2009. The sudden missive from the Morcha to the Prime Minister is being considered as a strategy to put pressure on the BJP.
“Like permanent political solution, this issue had also earned assurance from different quarters of the BJP. Now that the BJP is focussing on the Bengal Assembly elections, it seems the Tamang faction is trying to mount pressure on the party,” said a veteran in hill politics.
Anit has told the Trinamul government that the demand of GTA employees should be considered.
“In his letter, he has mentioned that since the days of the DGHC, temporary employees have been recruited by different departments. Their demand to make them permanent is old. The GTA has informed the state that it intends to give such appointments to them. However, no decision has reached the GTA from the state so far,” said a Morcha insider.
In total, over 4,000 temporary employees work in four categories at the GTA and since Wednesday, they have been on a pen-down strike and it will continue till September 10 over the demand.
The letter to Mamata, political analysts said, indicates that the Tamang faction also wants to prove that it, too, can mount pressure on its ally.
Civic employees’ plea A group of casual employees of Darjeeling municipality met L.B. Rai, the president of Trinamul’s Darjeeling district committee (hills), requesting him to approach the state to make their jobs permanent.
Rai said on Thursday that he had decided to meet Firhad Hakim, the state minister for municipal affairs and urban development in Calcutta, with a delegation of these employees.
Additional reporting by Bireswar Banerjee
