Gorkhaland will not solve problems: Yechury

Yechury effort to boost cadre morale
- First CPM rally in darjeeling in one-and-a-half years VIVEK CHHETRI

Sarkar (left) and Yechury in Darjeeling to campaign for the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday. Picture by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, April 21: For the 100-odd CPM supporters who walked in a procession for about 50 metres before the party’s first public meeting in Darjeeling town in one-and-a-half years, it was a march for survival.

One of the oldest outfits in the hills that had talked about autonomy way back in the 1950s (it was the undivided Communist Party of India then), the CPM today is fighting for existence in Darjeeling. Never in the party’s political history had the Communists been completely wiped out of the hills.

Even during the 1986 agitation for Gorkhaland spearheaded by the GNLF, the CPM had been able to keep its Bijanbari-Pulbazar-Chungthung bastion intact. Many cadres had died but the red flag had continued to flutter unwavering. The Left party had even managed to win one of the 28 seats in the Bijanbari-Pulbazar area in the first DGHC elections in 1988.

Twenty years later the tide changed, even in Bijanbari. Many party leaders from the hills had formed the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists (CPRM) in 1997, cutting into the CPM’s support base. Aware that the party might not get the 40,000 votes it got from the hills in the parliamentary polls last time, the leaders today talked about cadre morale.

“This meeting will definitely boost the morale of our cadres in the hills,” both Sitaram Yechury and Jibesh Sarkar said in unison after the public meeting.

While Sarkar, the party’s Lok Sabha candidate in the Darjeeling constituency, talked about unity and peace and respecting the sentiments of the hill people, the CPM’s star campaigner spoke on the need to “defeat the Congress and isolate the BJP” at the Centre.

The CPM also talked about granting Scheduled Tribes status to all non-tribal hill people — an issue which has been raised by GNLF chief Subash Ghisingh while asking his voters not to exercise their franchise in the coming elections. “In the 1931 census, all the hill people had been classified as tribes. This demand must be raised in Parliament,” Sarkar told the gathering in Nepali. No applause, however, greeted Sarkar’s statement.

There were no clapping and whistling during the entire two-hour meeting at Chowk Bazar either although many passers-by from the Hill Cart Road had joined the audience making it into a decent crowd.

The CPM asked the hill people to stop looking at the Lok Sabha elections as a referendum on Gorkhaland. “This is not a referendum but merely an election to decide who will run the country,” said Saman Pathak, the CPM’s Rajya Sabha member.

Lambasting the BJP, Yechury said it was scientifically proven that when things went up to the space, it lost weight. “Jaswant Singh has come from Rajasthan, he might be a heavyweight there but not here. I think he was not sure of winning a seat there,” said the CPM politburo member, highlighting the “duplicity” of the BJP and its candidate’s stand on the statehood issue.

Justifying the Left’s hobnobbing with the Telengana Rastriya Samity (TRS), Yechury said: “What we have with the TRS is only a seat arrangement. We will try to explain to the TRS that it would be better if they go for autonomy rather than statehood. We are against smaller states.”

The CPM politburo member also spoke of his visit to Nepal three years ago to broker peace with the Maoists. It was a reference to the party’s commitment to the Nepali people. But it was also an indication that Yechury had not been properly briefed as the Gorkhaland agitation supposedly started to distinguish between Indian Nepali-speaking people and those from Nepal.

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Yechury asks Hill to back Third Front
Statesman News Service

SILIGURI, April 21: The CPI-M Politburo member Mr Sitaram Yechury today asked the people of the Darjeeling hills not to get swayed by the BJP's pro-Gorkhaland bluster and to strengthen the proposed Third Front instead to help evolve an enduring solution to the prolonged impasse in the hills. He was addressing an election meeting at Chowk Bazaar in Darjeeling town today(photograph below).

“The BJP- propelled Gorkhaland demand would soon crumble against hard reality and the saffronites would desert the hills once the election is over. The same is true in case of the Congress-led UPA. They too have failed to live up to the ‘deep rooted pangs’ of the hills. But the Leftists do not tickle emotions to garner votes,” he said.

Taking digs at the BJP and the Congress, the senior CPI-M leader said that the two principal alliances were crumbling due to lack of ideological coherence and mutual confidence. “This is a natural culmination of opportunism-driven alliances. Their electoral prospects are growing bleak in the same proportions as the acceptability of the Third Front concept is ascending. So we ask the people of this picturesque land to lend weight behind the Third Front as it alone would sincerely strive to solve the problems beyond the electoral claptraps,” he asserted.

Dismissing smaller state concept as anachronistic, the CPI-M leader said that his party had remained steadfast to its commitment on the matter. “ Bifurcating states to cater to ethnic aspirations goes against the grain of the civilization march. Such an antediluvian notion would do nothing other than exacerbating ethnic distemper in a multi-ethnic country like India,” he averred.

Meanwhile, reacting sharply to Mr Yechury's comment on the BJP regarding the hills, senior BJP leaders said that their party's history was a saga of meeting commitment irrespective of consequences unlike that of the Communists. “The Communists are adept to stabbing on the back but the BJP fulfils pledge even at the risk of adverse consequences. We have formed several states in the past and would do so in future if the situation warrants,” said the party spokesperson Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Another senior BJP leader, Mr S S Ahluwalia said that his party would fulfill the pledge as mentioned in the manifesto: “ We would respect our commitment, whether we win the Darjeeling seat or not,” he asserted

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Gorkhaland will not solve problems: Yechury
News Track India

Darjeeling, April 21 (IANS) Formation of a separate state of Gorkhaland will not solve problems faced by people in West Bengal's Darjeeling hills, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury said here Monday.
 
Addressing the maiden election meeting organised by the CPI-M in the hills of north Bengal in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls April 30, Yechury said tripartite talks involving the state and central governments and the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) were the only way to find a solution to the Gorkhaland crisis.

 He said if the Third Front, in which the CPI-M was playing a major role, was voted to power, Darjeeling hills will get a higher level of autonomy.
 
 The meeting in support of CPI-M candidate Jibesh Sarkar at Chawkbazar in the heart of Darjeeling town attracted a motley crowd.
 
 Lambasting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for following 'anti-people policies', Yechury said none of these two combinations would be able to form the next government at the centre after the polls.
 
 Ridiculing the BJP's decision to field its veteran leader Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling with the support of pro-Gorkhaland GJM, Yechury said: 'Jaswant Singh is no longer a heavyweight candidate'.