Darjeeling, April 24: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha wants the Bengal government to dissolve the 114 gram panchayats in the Darjeeling hills and nominate a board, taking the party into confidence, to speed up development work in the region.

Following a constitutional amendment in 1997, the DGHC area has a two-tier panchayat system. However, elections to the panchayat samities (upper tier) have never been held in the hills and even the gram panchayats are defunct since 2005 when the last term ended.

The state government did not push for the elections because the former caretaker administrator of the DGHC, Subash Ghisingh, had insisted on waiting till the Sixth Schedule status was granted to the hills.

Morcha leaders, however, said they were “not talking about elections”.

“We want the present panchayats to be dissolved and a board nominated in their place, taking the Morcha into confidence,” said Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the party, after holding talks with the state government in Calcutta yesterday. The Morcha has already announced that it would not contest any elections until the demand for a new state of Gorkhaland was met.

Although the panchayats have technically been dissolved, sources said the pradhans still issue birth and residential certificates and head the committees supervising the 100-day work scheme in the hills. Analysts said the Morcha has made this demand to wrest control of the rural vote bank.