Jana Chetana for non-implementation of GTA

Jana Chetana for non-implementation of GTA

21 February 2012

statesman news service
SILIGURI, 21 FEB: Jana Chetana, the Bagdogra-based voluntary body that has been spearheading movement against the demand of Gorkhaland and the autonomous bodies for the Darjeeling Hills since 1986, is sending missives to the President of India, Prime Minister and the Union home minister asking them to stop implementing the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) agreement in view of the unresolved citizenship tangle involved in the issue.
The president of the body and an eminent physician, Dr DP Kar, today said in Siliguri that giving presidential assent to the GTA Bill without delving deep into the citizenship question would undermine the Constitution and rule of law.
“This apart, we have drawn the attention of the chief minister to the incompatibility of the constitution of a high power committee to identify additional lands across the sensitive, multi-ethnic Dooars-Terai with the citizenship laws and the Union home ministry-issued 1988 Extra-ordinary Gazette Notification,” Dr Kar said.
Another organisation, Dooars-Terai  Nagarik Manch, is a joint signatory to the memorandum, the copy of which would  be sent to the chief minister, Miss Mamata Banerjee, as well. “The state government would do an enormous disservice to the cause of the nation if it doggedly indulges the GJMM land clamour involving the ethnically sensitive Terai-Dooars. A number of ethnic groups, all of Indian descent, have been inhabiting the region for years. It would be preposterous to put them on equal footing with those who keep migrating from Nepal as treaty beneficiaries courtesy certain clauses of the 1950 Indo-Nepal Friendship Treaty,” he said.
He warned the unabated migration of the Nepalese citizens would wreak demographic havoc with the strategically fragile region part of which is known as chickens’ neck in parlance of strategic thinking.
“Inter-ethnic conflagration with international ramifications cannot be ruled out with the demographic invasion going on in full swing,” Dr Kar said.
President of Dooars-Terai Nagarik Manch N Burman said: “We have stayed away from the deliberations of the high power committee because it is a body bereft of respectability. Those who are claiming additional lands are important members of the committee. It can hardly be impartial. Besides, we would like to remain focused on the preponderant citizenship tangle involved in the GTA.”