Darjeeling, April 3: The circumstances leading to the blasts in Siliguri have sent ripples in the hills as the incident could have serious ramifications in the political arena.

The explosions come close on the heels of Bengal urban development minister Ashok Bhattachary’s statement that “foreign powers are trying to take advantage of the situation in the hills”.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which has been demanding that Siliguri be made part of the proposed Gorkhaland along with the Dooars, said the explosions are part of a bigger plan to destabilise the democratic movement of the party in the plains.

“We believe that certain elements with vested interest are trying to destabilise the Siliguri region. The incident took place after we announced a series of democratic programmes in the plains. We strongly condemn the incident,” said Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Morcha.

Champasari, a part of Siliguri, has a large number of Nepali speaking people and recently some of them had aligned themselves with the Morcha.

The Morcha has also demanded that the state government immediately initiate an inquiry and bring to book “the vested elements involved in the blast”.

Political observers believe that the blasts might give enough reasons to the government to “rethink the law and order” situation in the region. As a result, the deployment of additional security personnel could pose a problem for the Morcha, which will be organising meetings in the Dooars from April 20.

Earlier this week, Asok Mohan Chakrabarti, the home secretary, during his visit to Darjeeling said the government was looking into allegations of “foreign powers” trying to de-stabilise the region. Although Chakraborti did not sound worried then, today’s incident could force a rethink.