Asok concerned over nomenclature of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration

statesman news service
SILIGURI, 12 JULY: The former state urban development minister and senior CPI-M leader, Mr Asok Bhattacharya, today expressed concern over the nomenclature of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. “I am particularly concerned over insertion of the term ‘administration’ instead of the conventional ‘council’ in the proposed nomenclature of the council being mooted for the restive Darjeeling Hills,” he said.
The former minister today made it clear that his party had found nothing to object to the inclusion of the term ‘Gorkhaland’ in the proposed nomenclature. “There are several such instances like the Bodoland Territorial Council in the Assam,” he said.
“I only said that the Centre should have taken into confidence all the political parties concerned before deciding to include the contentious term  ‘Gorkhaland’ in the nomenclature,” Mr Bhattacharya claimed.
“What we are really apprehensive about is the inclusion of the term ‘administration’ instead of the conventional term ‘council'. We have reasons to believe that it would prove a stepping-stone to the Union Territory status for the strategically important hill region in West Bengal. May be, the over-enthusiastic chief minister has been trapped,” he said.  
He further said that the GJMM had many options up its sleeve. “We would not be surprised if they start clamouring for UT status in the coming days, for, in their reckoning, UT status would prove an intermediary to the long-nourished statehood aspiration. Perhaps, to keep all options open, the hill-based party has insisted on keeping the proposed council under no constitutional obligation,” he said. 
 “The coming days would make it clear which of the two parties involved in the poker game has won at the expense of the other.’’
“Apparently, it seems, the sly GJMM think tank has beguiled the overzealous chief minister into a smug sense of self-satisfaction. The portents look perilous as far as the territorial integrity of the state is concerned,” Mr Bhattacharya said.