Kalimpong will be declared district by Mamata on Tuesday

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is going to bring an end to the long wait of the people of Kalimpong on Tuesday when the sub-division in the hills is going to start functioning as the 21st district of Bengal.

The Chief Minister will set out for North Bengal on Monday. As per the present schedule, Banerjee will be arriving in Bagdogra Airport on Monday afternoon and will go to Kalimpong.

She will be attending a programme at Mela Ground that would start at around 2 pm on Tuesday. In the programme she will be announcing Kalimpong as the new district that would start functioning from the same day itself. She will also be announcing Mirik as a new sub-division.

She will also hold an administrative meeting with the district officials and there would also be a meeting with members of all development boards at Town Hall. She

will be returning to the city on Thursday.

Kalimpong will start functioning as a district with three community development blocks and Kalimpong Municipality. The three community development blocks are Kalimpong-I, Kalimpong-II and Gorubathan that houses around 42 gram panchayats. There are at present three police stations.

Sources said that till the work to create necessary infrastructure gets completed, the District Magistrate's office will be housed in the building where the sub-divisional officer's office is situated.

Similarly, the office of the Superintendent of Police for the time being will be in the building that houses the office of Additional Superintendent of the police.

On December 18, Banerjee had announced for the first time that Kalimpong would be made a new district. On the same day, she had also made the announcement that Mirik block will be upgraded to a subdivision.

It may be mentioned that the then local MLA Harka Bahadur Chhetri had launched a campaign demanding up-gradation of Kalimpong to a district after he had resigned from the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

The Calcutta High Court has given permission to set up three districts Kalimpong, Asansol and Jhargram on November 28. The Chief Minister had formed a team that was led by state's Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee to prepare a report on the infrastructure that need to be created for Kalimpong as a new district. Accordingly, necessary steps were taken to set the infrastructure.