Dec. 12: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today threatened to hold a 72-hour bandh and skip the talks in Delhi on December 29 unless action was taken against those who allegedly attacked its pro-Gorkhaland rallies in the past two days.

“If the arrests are not made by December 22, we will call a 72-hour general strike across Gorkhaland. This strike will be very intense and we’ll mobilise our supporters in the plains to ensure it is total,” president Bimal Gurung said.

The party demanding a separate state also wants inspector-general police (north Bengal) K.L. Tamta to be shifted by December 22. “A probe must be ordered to find out if he is siding with the CPM to attack our supporters,” Gurung said.

The bandh across what Gurung calls Gorkhaland means it will include Siliguri, the Terai and the Dooars.

The Morcha has named 54 people in FIRs after the clashes at Kalchini (Jalpaiguri) and Debidanga (outskirts of Siliguri). It wants all 54 arrested in 10 days.

“On the one hand they (the state government) call a tripartite meeting and, on the other, their leaders incite ethnic strife,” the Morcha president said in Darjeeling.

The Morcha’s meeting with state and central officials is meant to end the impasse in the hills because of its agitation and frequent trouble.

Its general secretary, Roshan Giri, said the “original Bengali inhabitants” of the region were against strife. “But those who have come from Bangladesh in the late eighties and nineties are trying to destabilise the region.”

A “Bengali medicine shop owner in Kalchini”, he said, had sheltered a group of Morcha girls during the violence. “The immigrants have been given ration cards and government jobs by the CPM and they are the ones trying to create problems,” he added.

Tourism minister Manab Mukherjee, in Siliguri today, accused the Morcha of tarnishing Darjeeling’s reputation as a tourist destination. Only a few days ago, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had said the Morcha’s habit of calling bandhs had led to a drop in hill tourists.

Many of them were forced to hurry down on Wednesday night after the Morcha suddenly called a bandh on Thursday. Many more were stranded in the hills and the plains.