Deputy magistrate Kumar Bhusal (second from right) and CPM leader Tara Sundas (extreme right) at the PHE office on Upper Cart Road during the inspection. Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, March 24: The Darjeeling district administration bowed to persistent demands of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and allowed representatives of political parties to accompany inspection teams that visited DGHC offices in Kalimpong today to prepare an inventory of all files and official documents housed there.

Flouting government norms, district magistrate Rajesh Pandey gave in to the Morcha demand for the sake of “transparency”. After GNLF chief Subash Ghisingh agreed to step down as caretaker administrator of the council, the Morcha accused certain retired DGHC officers of smuggling out files. Morcha members had created quite a stir earlier this month by seizing files from the residences of some officers.

“Questions were being raised in certain quarters about transparency. The participation of political parties in the process is an attempt to eliminate all such doubts,” said Pandey over the phone from Darjeeling. The district magistrate is also the principal secretary of the council.

“We welcome the initiative of the principal secretary,” said Tara Sundas, the Kalimpong zonal secretariat member of the CPM, who was part of an inspection team.

There are five such teams, each headed by a deputy magistrate, and they will go through documents at 25 DGHC departments in town.

Anmole Prasad, a lawyer and member of the Morcha central committee, said: “The law enjoins citizens not only to prevent the commission of a crime, but also to prevent the disappearance of evidence that may be connected to it.”

Prasad and two other party colleagues had met Pandey and the current council administrator B.L. Meena last week and impressed upon them the urgent need to guard against the disappearance of files from DGHC offices.

“Apart from demanding the preparation of an inventory to secure all officials documents, we also said we wanted a three-member monitoring committee, comprising Morcha leaders, to oversee the exercise” Prasad said.

Morcha plans

In Kurseong, the Morcha brought out a procession today demanding that Ghisingh withdraw his signature from the accord of 1988, which led to the formation of the DGHC, and the memorandum of settlement of 2005, proposed to bring the hills under the Sixth Schedule.

Both are impeding the statehood demand, Morcha leaders said.

The Morcha will also organise hunger strikes across the hills, Terai and the Dooars on April 10 to protest against the Siliguri Municipal Corporation’s decision to oppose the inclusion of Siliguri and the Dooars in the proposed new state.

However, the party will withdraw its strike at the Darjeeling Municipality for the “convenience of the people”. It was launched last month to question the legality of the election to the post of the civic chairperson won by the GNLF in the absence of a government observer.