Dooars-Terai ethnic groups in battlefield GTA

 The Pioneer, 28 MAY 2012 : The Hill time-bomb seems to be ticking away, as ethnic groups of the Dooars and Terai vowing ‘to resist tooth and nail any bid to include even an inch of our land into the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration’. With reports of Justice Shyamal Sen Committee on the vexed issue scheduled to come out within a few of weeks, the ethnic groups of Jalpaiguri district have decided to start a protest movement against what they called a ploy to ‘rob the locals of their land in order to appease the Gorkhas’. These groups include the Bodo People’s Forum, Toto Social Welfare Forum and Rava Development Council, apart from the Lepcha and Dhukpa organisations. These groups, largely inhabiting the Alipurduar sub-division of Jalpaiguri, are working in tandem with the local Bengalis and Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad and even the Kamtapuri People’s Party, according to sources. The joint council of these groups that officially started its movement from Sunday iterated that no area from the Dooars and Terai would be allowed to go into the GTA. Gorkha Janmukti Morcha spearheading the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration movement has demanded 498 moujas from the plains that could account for a total area measuring about a sub-division. ‘The GJM is asking for pieces of land that officially does not belong to the Gorkhas. In fact historically speaking most of these areas are now colonised by infiltrators who came from Nepal in the past two decades. They have no right to claim these areas,’ said NK Burman a leader of Dooars-Terai Citizen’s Forum insisting ‘we have no problem with whatever they do in the Hills. But we will not allow them to grab lands in the plains.’ The larger organisations like ABAVP, Amra Bangali and KPP had already been protesting against any transfer of land from plains to the GTA. ‘Not only this land belongs to the local people, but also if moujas are given to GTA then it would be a big jolt to cause of making Alipurduar a district’ an Alipurduar Guardians’ Forum leader said adding ‘the administration is playing with fire’ and warning a problem that was initially confined to the Hills would now be transported to the plains inviting insurgent forces from neighbouring Assam. The ABAVP, KPP and Bengalis on their part have opposed the composition of the high-powered committee that consisted of only Gorkhas and had no representatives from the people from Dooars and Terai. Meanwhile, the number of GTA constituencies went up to 45 after 17 moujas were added to the existing 28 which formed the part of the erstwhile Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council. These added moujas are however not the part of the 498 moujas which have been demanded by the GJM. Elsewhere sources said Shyamal Sen Committee could strike a compromise by giving only a few moujas to the GTA in order to afford the GJM a face-saver in the Hills. The Hill outfit has threatened that it would not let elections take place in Darjeeling till the delimitation of the Dooars-Terai areas was completed.