Eight member team including Darjeeling MP SS Ahluwalia met Rajnath Singh.
An eight-member team of leaders of political parties from the hills met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday.
There were five Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leaders – Rohit Sharma, Sarita Rai, Swaraj Thapa, Roshan Giri and Ashok Lama. The other three were Arun Ghatani of Communist Party Revolutionary Marxist, Biplov Rai of Akhil Bhartiya Gorkha League and Dawa Pakhrin of Gorkhaland Rajya Nirman Morcha. Also present with Singh was Darjeeling MP and BJP leader SS Ahluwalia.
The meeting which hardly lasted for about 15 minutes had a one point agenda of Gorkhaland. Leaders pointed out that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had pointed out that Gorkhaland statehood was beyond the purview of the state government and thus they requested Singh to initiate tripartite talks.
They said that it was upon the request of Singh that the Yuwa Morcha had lifted their hunger strike on August 13 and had agreed to partake in the meeting with the state government on August 29. “GJM leaders also condemned the blasts at the hills and said that they were being framed with false cases and that an NIA probe was necessary to find out who the actual offenders were who had been behind the blasts,” said one of the leaders who was present there.
They also asked the Centre to intervene and stop the state government and administration from carrying out arbitrary raids into the residences of GJM leaders. “We also cited the example of how police lathi charged and fired tear gas shells on Friday on a group which was agitating peacefully,” the leader added. It had also been decided that GJM would attend the meeting convened by Mamata Banerjee, on September 29 at Uttarkanya (the state secretariat at Siliguri).
Asked how Singh had responded, the leader said, “This was not an interactive meeting. We just met him to apprise him of the situation and tell him our demands. We believe that through this we have taken our demand for Gorkhaland a step ahead.”
In another development at the hills police conducted raids at different places at Singla and recovered explosives, detonators and other materials used to make bombs. “We conducted raids at an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) factory and recovered IED and other materials producing explosives and some bullet heads. We are investigating the matter and among other names we have found out that Dipen Male, personal assistant of Bimal Gurung had been actively involved in it,” said Darjeeling SP, Akhilesh Chaturvedi. He also said that there could have been external help from people who had been trained in the Northeast.
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