Siliguri, June 27: Bengal urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya today trained his guns at PCC president and Union minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi for “maligning” the state’s image with regard to Darjeeling.

“The way Das Munshi attempted to malign our government in public is unbecoming of a central minister. His claim that the state had advocated the Sixth Schedule status for Darjeeling hills is not true,” Bhattacharya said at a news conference here. “The state had asked for regional autonomy and constitutional status for the DGHC area under Article 371 in 2005. But when the Centre said this can be granted under the Sixth Schedule, we had agreed to the proposal,” he clarified.

The CPM leader also read out a letter of the chief minister written in 2005. “In the letter, besides advocating for regional autonomy, Bhattacharjee had also asked for a tripartite meeting to resolve the problem,” he added.

The Bengal minister also took a dig at the PCC chief for criticising the state government for its alleged failure to obtain funds from the Centre for development of civic bodies.

“These (Das Munshi’s comments) are far from truth as the urban development department has been working on drinking water, slum and infrastructure development, housing, education and health schemes and has allocated crores of rupees to civic bodies. Many of these are central schemes,” he said.

On the other hand, the Opposition leader in the Bengal Assembly, Partha Chatterjee, has termed the movement for Gorkhaland “democratic”, but said the Trinamul Congress was against the further division of the state.

Chatterjee held both the Union and the Bengal governments responsible for prolonging the problem in Darjeeling. “Lack of development is the main issue in the hills and both the Centre and the state government are currently trying to use it for their own political interests,” said Chatterjee. The Trinamul leader was in north Bengal to campaign for the civic elections.

The Opposition leader said the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha should have also been invited to the all-party meeting in Calcutta convened by the state government on Gorkhaland, as the agenda of the meeting was related with its movement. “But the government did not do so which prompted us not to attend the meeting.”

Again, after declaring the Morcha a non-political outfit (since it was not called to the all-party meeting), the chief minister should not invite its representatives “so frequently” for dialogues, Chatterjee said adding senior officials also should not have been sent to Siliguri for the talks.