Snubbing the Centre’s offer of holding the third round of tripartite talks on August 24 in Delhi, the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha said further talks should be held at the political level, and should be “fruitful”.

On Wednesday, the Union home secretary had requested the GJM to call off the ongoing indefinite bandh. The two rounds of talks held in September and December last year involved the Union home secretary and the Bengal chief secretary, besides the Morcha representatives.

“We don’t want secretary-level talks anymore. We have received a letter specifying the date for the next round of talks. The dialogue henceforth should be political and involve the West Bengal Chief Minister and the Union Home Minister. We feel the secretary-level talks have not produced any favourable results,” senior GJM leader Amar Lama said, adding that general secretary Roshan Giri and leader Harka Bahadur Chettri were in Delhi and would likely be meeting Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday.

“The Darjeeling MP, Jaswant Singh, is facilitating our endeavour. In fact, a lot of what is going on in Delhi is at his initiative,” Lama said while ruling out calling off the ongoing bandh.

Lama said there was no need for guardians of students of residential hill schools to worry.

All schools and colleges in the Hills have closed down since the bandh began. “There is no problem with schools. We have not asked guardians to take their wards out of Darjeeling. We know there are many reputed schools here with students coming from even Thailand. They (parents) have nothing to worry about,” he said.

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