A blockade set up by DGHC casual workers in Darjeeling. Picture by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling/Siliguri, Nov. 19: The district magistrate and 14 of his staff members went without food and water for nearly 12 hours today as more than 500 DGHC contract workers laid siege to the district collectorate in Darjeeling. The officials were not allowed to even use the toilet for the first seven hours of the siege that started at 11.15am.

The workers had been demanding regularisation of their jobs, the letters for which they claimed the government had promised to distribute from November 17.

At 5.45pm, the protesters came out of the chambers, including that of district magistrate Surendra Gupta, to sit on the collectorate corridor and the courtyard. Gupta and his staff were then allowed to use the toilets. However, no food or water made its way to the officers till nearly 10pm when the protesters offered them biscuits and flattened rice.

The Janmukti Asthahi Karmachari Sangathan (JAKS), the organisation of contract workers affiliated to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, had plans to announce an agitation today.

But by 10.30am, all JAKS members assembled at Gorkha Dukha Nibarak Sammelan Hall and soon started setting up blockades on roads across the hills and confining the collectorate officials to their chambers. The blockades from 11am to 2pm hit traffic hard. Many people, who were supposed to catch afternoon flights and usually start from Darjeeling between 9am and 10am, were stranded at various points across the hills.

Till 2pm only ambulances were allowed to move around. By then almost three hours had passed since Gupta, along with P. Zimba, the additional district magistrate, Amalkanti Roy, the subdivisional officer of Darjeeling, and at least 11 other officials of the collectorate had been confined to their rooms.

Many officials were seen frantically calling out to the Morcha leaders to allow them to use the toilets, but the protesters refused to budge.

The other employees of the district magistrate’s office had been asked to leave as the protesters locked the main gate of the campus.

Machendra Subba, the president of JAKS, said: “We had waited patiently for the government to live up to its word, but it has failed. We will continue to confine the officials until we get a positive response on our appointment.”

At 9.30pm, Morcha president Bimal Gurung met the district magistrate. “The DGHC administrator has not kept his word… We demand his resignation as well as that of the principal secretary of the DGHC,” Gurung said after he came out of Gupta’s chamber. The district magistrate is the principal secretary of the DGHC. Another group of 500 JAKS members laid siege to administrator B.L. Meena’s bungalow at Pintail Village, near Siliguri. A blockade was set up on NH55 from 11am to 2pm at Dagapur, 6km from Siliguri. Around 6pm, JAKS members entered the courtyard of Meena’s bungalow and refused to budge unless the appointment letters came.

“They are sitting outside shouting slogans, the police are there,” Meena said over the phone. He said the regularisation issue had been discussed with senior state government officials in Calcutta. “The best possible efforts are being made to sort it out, but it will take time,” the administrator said.

Morcha central committee member Amar Lama said Meena had given them a written assurance on October 30 that appointment letters would be issued from November 17. “We waited till yesterday but the government has done little. They are probably trying to politicise the issue. We have told the district magistrate to ask the DGHC administrator to come to Darjeeling within four hours,” said Lama.

When reported that Lama has demanded that he visit Darjeeling in four hours, Meena said: “Who is he (Lama)? I am not bound to take orders from him.”