Bimal Gurung, the Morcha president

March 20: Members of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in the Dooars will hold relay hunger strikes in demand of Gorkhaland for three days starting tomorrow. The venues are Kalchini, Madarihat, Birpara and Banarhat in Jalpaiguri district.

Not only that, central leaders of the party have planned to organise a meeting in Siliguri on April 20 and tour the entire Dooars after that.

“Our president Bimal Gurung, accompanied by six-seven central leaders, will make up the touring team,” confirmed Binay Tamang, the press and publicity secretary of the Morcha, today.

“We will also attend at least three meetings organised by local Morcha leaders to disseminate our demands, strategy and achievements among people residing in the region. The venues are yet to be fixed,” Tamang said.

“It would take us 10-12 days to complete the tour of the entire Dooars,” he added.

The CPRM has also chosen Siliguri as its venue for a post-mortem session on why a century-old demand for a “separate administrative set-up” for the people of the Darjeeling hills has not yet been realised.

D.S. Bomzom, spokesperson for the CPRM, said in Darjeeling today: “For the past one century, we have been demanding that the hills be given a separate administrative set up. This demand has not yet been fulfilled and we would now like to look into the reason and also work out a strategy towards fulfilling our goal.”

The CPRM programme will be held on March 23, where the party will not only look into the past agitation for statehood but also formalise an action plan for the attainment of the goal in the coming years.

It was in 1907 that a section of the hill people first demanded that they be given a separate administrative unit. In 1917, the same group formed the Hill Men Association and demanded a separation from Bengal. However, despite all political parties raising the same demand in the past few years, it is yet to be fulfilled.

The venue, which has been fixed for the CPRM programme at Darjeeling More, is also symbolic because the hill parties have been demanding that the proposed Gorkhaland include Siliguri subdivision along with the Dooars.

On March 23, the Morcha has decided to hold the Sadbhawana Diwas in Darjeeling.

“For years, people of different communities have lived in harmony in the hills and on that day, we will felicitate senior citizens of all communities at Chowrastha, Darjeeling,” said Dinesh Gurung, the president of the Morcha Town Committee.