Election Commission has failed to conduct free and fair poll in Darjeeling: Asok

18 April 2011

sns & agencies
SILIGURI/DARJEELING, 18 APRIL: “The Election Commission has failed to conduct a free and fair poll in three subdivisions of the Darjeeling Hills,” the state urban development minister, Mr Asok Bhattacharya, claimed today. The polling in the Darjeeling Hills was held under the shadow of fear, he said. “As apprehended, the GJMM activists captured several booths. The election agents belonging to the non-GJMM parties, including those of the CPI-M, could not enter the polling stations. The election has been reduced to a mockery of democracy,” Mr Bhattacharya alleged.
Slamming the Darjeeling district administration, he said: “Despite having evidence of GJMM chief Mr Bimal Gururng's complicity in several crimes, the administration had kept on dithering in booking him.”  “We are unhappy with the role played by the Election Commission,” he said adding that his party would lodge a complaint with the EC and the district magistrate tomorrow demanding immediate arrest of Mr Gurung.
Speaking on the issue, CPI-M state committee member Mr Jibesh Sarkar said that the role of the administration was dubious. “Mr Gurung threatened to hound out Mr Subash Ghisingh out of the Hills in public. Is this not evidence enough to have him arrested?” he asked.
GJMM rejects Ghisingh’s proposal
The Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) today rejected the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) chief, Mr Subash Ghisingh's demand for sixth schedule status for the Darjeeling Hills and said people would force him out of the Hills for undermining their desire for a separate state of Gorkhaland. Taking offence at Mr Ghisingh repeatedly pitching for the sixth schedule status at his public meetings and media interactions since returning to the Hills earlier this month, GJMM general secretary Mr Roshan Giri said: "Even GNLF supporters are now pained and angry with him."
Mr Ghisingh has for the past few years been a votary of the sixth schedule status ~ a constitutional provision for fast development of tribal areas by setting up autonomous regional councils authorised to take legislative decisions independently and having access to annual grant-in-aids and other additional revenue sources.
"People had thrown him out of the Hills earlier. They will again show him the way out. We don't have to do anything," Mr Giri said after casting his vote.