Bhattacharjee at Anil Biswas Bhavan. (A Telegraph picture)

Siliguri, March 2: Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today directed the CPM leaders of Darjeeling district to strive for peace, development and democracy in the hills.

At a meeting with the district leadership at the just-inaugurated Anil Biswas Bhavan, Bhattacharjee reviewed the situation in the three subdivisions of Kalimpong, Kurseong and Darjeeling, following the recent spate of bandh, protests and indefinite hunger strike by supporters of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. The hill party led by Bimal Gurung had been demanding the removal of Subash Ghisingh as caretaker administrator of the DGHC and the scrapping of the Sixth Schedule bill. Bhattacharjee said he was satisfied with the negotiations that made it possible for normality to return to the hills. According to one of the conditions of the deal, the government asked Ghisingh to step down from his by post by March 10.

“He has instructed party leaders to work towards a permanent peace in the hills. For the moment, the emphasis will not be on the Sixth Schedule status but on development and democracy,” urban development minister and district Left Front convener Asok Bhattacharya said later. The chief minister was on a two-day visit to Siliguri to attend the Citu state conference. He left for Calcutta today.

On their part, the district CPM leaders acknowledged the “timely initiative” taken by the chief minister. “The agitation in the hills disrupted normal life in the plains as well. We told him that the trouble in the hills was for three reasons. First, since no polls have been held in the DGHC for a long a time, the people’s mandate was not known. Secondly, progress and development had virtually stopped as the panchayats lacked power and lastly prices have gone up and water scarcity is still there.”

The chief minister also advised the leadership that while negotiations for permanent peace would continue, efforts for progress and development must start at the earliest. “The party would have to campaign for this in the hills,” he said.

Transport changes

Subhas Chakraborty said the transport system of the state would be revamped very soon, reports our Siliguri correspondent.

“We are going for total restructuring using the private-public partnership model,” Chakraborty told reporters on the sidelines of the five-day state Citu conference that began here yesterday.