A year after,BJP polls apart on Gorkhaland

When contacted,Rajiv Pratap Rudy,another BJP spokesperson,had a completely different take.

“An unambiguous support both on ground,letter and spirit,” he wrote in an SMS sent to The Indian Express.

It was Rudy who had moved a resolution in the Rajya Sabha demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland. 

The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) was surprised at the statement of Taun Vijay. “Sushma Swaraj said in Parliament that the BJP was in favour of Gorkhaland. We met their president Nitin Gadkari and he gave us his unequivocal support. I can’t understand why Vijay has said this,” said Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri.

The state BJP,on the other hand,has always maintained an ambiguous stand on this issue. “We are for the economic and social development of Gorkhas,” state BJP president Rahul Sinha had said earlier.

BJP’s flip-flop apart,Darjeeling MP Jaswant Singh,who won the Lok Sabha polls on a BJP ticket,has also toned down his support for a separate Gorkhaland.

After a meeting with Morcha leaders in Darjeeling yesterday,Singh said he was more keen on development and the government should think of that first.

Singh,who came to Darjeeling on a three-day trip,today came to Kalimpong from where he left for Delhi.

Gorkhas ‘hurt’ by Venkaiah’s remarks

Express News Service

New Delhi

Taking strong exception to being referred to in the same vein as ‘Khalistanis’ by M Venkaiah Naidu,the Gorkhas have asked the former BJP president to withdraw his remarks immediately.

Pointing to a news report published in The Indian Express  on May 3,the Bhartiya Gorkha Parisangh,a national organisation representing the community,said Naidu’s statement exemplified the “stigma faced by the loyal Indian Gorkhas of being foreigners and separatists”.

Naidu,while demanding that the exercise to prepare the National Population Register be delineated from the census,had objected to a column in the NPR form which asked for the nationality of the person as declared by him.

“What would happen if someone were to mention Khalistani or Gorkha as his nationality,” he had asked.

In an open letter to Naidu,Dr Enos Das Pradhan,working president of Bhartiya Gorkha Parisangh,said this statement was “mischievous,lacking in facts and totally ignorant of the idea behind the separate state being demanded by the Gorkhas,a demand that your party has supported in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections of 2009”.

“Coming from a leader of the party that has presumed to take up the cause of the Gorkhas,this statement is a demoralizing and hurtful to the Gorkhas of India. We protest strongly at your poor choice of examples to prove a debating point,where you have at one stroke,denigrated the contributions made by the Gorkhas to their motherland,” he said.

“We strongly protest your statement and would request you to rescind it immediately,” he said.