'Leaders with selfish motives cause of all Hill woes'

KOLKATA: The root cause of all the problems in the Hills is because of support to leaders with wrong and selfish motives," alleged Anit Thapa, General Secretary, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

Thapa stated that the trend had started from the violent agitation of the 1980s. "After mass support to the movement and hundreds of martyrs, the leaders settled for the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council. Again in 2007 we rallied behind Bimal Gurung for Gorkhaland. He settled for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.

Later in 2017, we came to know that both Gurung and the 2007 agitation had been propped by the Left Front Government to displace Subash Ghising.

Again there was an agitation for Gorkhaland in 2013 and Gurung returned with GTA. Since the end of the 2017 agitation we have been trying to put an end to this system," added Thapa. As a run-up to the forthcoming Assembly elections, the GJM (Binoy) have been holding regular workers meet. The GJM, general secretary feels that unemployment is a far bigger problem in the Hills than development. "The reason for this unemployment is the numerous agitations that the Hills had to go through", stated Thapa.

He added that youths in the Hills are educated and capable , but there are no jobs. "They have to run behind leaders to get jobs. This is owing to a faulty system created by faulty leaders," said Thapa.

"It has been purposefully instilled in our heads that Bengal is our enemy whereas the real enemy is these leaders who use the masses for their own selfish political agenda. We are not against Gorkhaland. We are against the auction of the Gorkhaland issue in each and every election. We are against agitations and bandhs that crop up at regular intervals," he added.