The Binay Tamang camp of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has step up heat on Darjeeling BJP MP Raju Bista and demanded his resignation if the Centre fails to place a bill and grant tribal status to 11 hill communities during Parliament’s budget session which started on Friday.
Keshav Raj Pokhrel, the spokesman for the Tamang faction, alleged that the BJP had been hoodwinking the Gorkhas since 2009 and it would no longer be allowed.
“The budget session started today and this time, we want the Darjeeling MP who has won by a record margin of over 4.5 lakh votes to ensure that the 11 communities are granted tribal status during the ongoing budget session or else, he should resign,” said Pokhrel.
The Tamang camp which is with the Trinamul Congress also appealed to the BJP alliance partners to dump the saffron camp if the demand remained unfulfilled when the session ended on ground of “principle”.
The demand for granting tribal status to Bhujel, Gurung, Mangar, Newar, Jogi, Khas, Rai, Sunuwar, Thami, Yakka (Dewan) and Dhimal (this community mostly resides in the Terai) is more than two decades old and the BJP has promised the same since 2014.
Observers believe that any development — positive or negative — on the ST status could be decisive in the outcome of election results in nearly 15 Assembly seats in north Bengal.
The fifth session of the 17th Lok Sabha started on Friday and will continue till February 15 after which it will be adjourned to resume on March 8 for a month.
Bista has been talking about some positive developments for the Gorkhas in his recent speeches. The other demand promised by the BJP is to find a “permanent political solution” for the region.
Despite Bista’s assurance, developments over the past three years on the tribal issue have not been encouraging.
The Union ministry of trial affairs had formed a committee in 2016, just before the Bengal elections, to examine the tribal status demand.
Since then, the committee was reconstituted three times and the final report was compiled by a team headed by M.R. Tshering, joint secretary, ministry of tribal affairs.
In 2019, Bishal Rai, a resident of Teesta, who is now with the Tamang camp, had obtained some salient features of the report through an RTI query.
From the RTI report, it was clear that the committee had passed the buck to the Office of Registrar General of India (ORGI). “The determination has to be done as per the modalities of the government. ORGI is the competent authority to determine if a community is as per its yardstick for listing as Schedule Tribe,” the report stated.
While addressing a public meeting in Kurseong two months ago, Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Bimal Gurung camp of the Morcha, had said that Union home minister had told a delegation that the tribal demand would be looked into after Assam Assembly elections.
“A delegation that included party president Bimal Gurung, me, Nima Tamang and Binu Sundas (Morcha leaders) met Amit Shah (Union home minister) and he said he would look into the issue (of tribal status) after Assam assembly elections,” Giri had said at the public meeting.
The delegation had purportedly held a meeting on July 21 though the names of Gurung and Giri had not been made public then.
Assam assembly elections are scheduled for 2021 almost at the same time Bengal goes to the polls. The Gurung camp also dumped the BJP a few months ago and has aligned with the Trinamul Congress.
Bista’s reaction could not be immediately obtained. Contacted just before filing this report, the Darjeeling MP said he was “at a meeting”.