ENS, IE, Kolkata: All India Gorkha League leaders in Darjeeling have demanded that the West Bengal government should deploy more Central forces in the hills to restore the democratic environment and arrest the killers of Madan Tamang, who was assassinated in the heart of the town on May 21. The demands were placed before State Urban Development Minister Ashok Bhattacharya, who holds charge of Darjeeling on behalf of the CPI(M) and who visited the hill town on Friday.
AIGL leaders Laxman Pradhan and Mohan Sharma said that the party was happy that the state government had, of late, been sending paramilitary forces to the hills. “But the West Bengal government should ensure that these is not mere eyewash. The forces should help restore the democratic environment, which has been totally vitiated by the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha over the past couple of years,” said the AIGL leaders.
“We will wait for some more time and watch the government’s action” before deciding on an agitation programme, said the leaders. An AIGL team led by Tamang’s widow had earlier met Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattachajree with the same demands.
Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists (CPRM), another political outfit in the hills, met today and adopted a couple of resolutions including a demand for the arrest of Tamang’s killers. The CPRM has taken up the Madan Tamang murder in a big way and has been acting as a pressure group for “concrete action” by the administration.
R B Rai, a leader of the party, pointed out that Tamang was not the only victim of Gorkha Janamukti Morcha-sponsored terror. Two other veteran hill leaders who were not with the GJMM had suffered the same fate. T R Chhetri, a GNLF leader, and Puspa Jung Thapa, also a GNLF leader of Chong Tong, were allegedly killed by GJM goons weeks before Madan Tamang’s murder. The assailants of those two leaders have not been arrested either and no action has been taken against the culprits, complained Rai.
Hill bandh on 5th
SHEEM News: GJMM is supporting Bharat Bandh sponsored by BJP in protest against hike on prices on 5th July. On the same day CPM has also called a bandh.
17 Child labourers were rescued by an NGO of Kalimpong. In the presence and help of Asst Labour Commissioner K Das. Various owners of the shops where these child labourers were employed as helping hands were also booked. Bal Suraksha Abhiyan was successful in its effort for the first time in Kalimpong. BSA is active for the last 3 years and has a shelter home for 125 Children.
Samten Kabo Photojournalist and Narendra Tamang Local Tv journalist was felicitated by Nepali Sahitya Utththan Samity on the occasion of Padri Ganga Prasad Pradhan Jayanti.
गंगतोक। सिक्किम के पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री तथा सिक्किम प्रदेश कांग्रेस प्रमुख नरबहादुर भण्डारी को दीर्घकालीन राजनैतिक, सामाजिक, शैक्षिक तथा अन्य सेवा के लिए अमेरिकन बायोग्राफिक इन्सीट्युट ने स्वर्ण पदक से सम्मानित करने की घोषणा की है। श्री भंडारी को गोल्ड मेडल फॉर इंडिया से सम्मानित किया जायेगा। इसे के लिए श्री भंडारी को संस्थान के अध्यक्ष जे एम इभांस ने पत्रचार कर औपचारिक रूप में मैडल के बारे में विस्तृत जानकारी दी है। कांग्रेस भवन से जारी पत्र के प्रतिलिपि में उल्लेख है कि अमेरिकन बॉयोग्राफिकल इन्सीट्युट इस महत्वपूर्ण सम्मान को सिर्फ राष्ट्रिय तथा क्षेत्रिय स्तर से उपर विश्वस्तर के नेताओं को ही प्रदान करते है।यह संस्थान ने 1967 से ही बॉयोग्राफिक वर्क करते आये है ओर कैम्ब्रीज विश्वविद्यालय के होस्ट ऑफ वर्ल्ड फोरम की मान्यता प्राप्त है। श्री भंडारी को सम्मान में स्वर्ण पदक देने के लिए 11 जुन को पत्राचार किया गया था।
LOST BATTLE
TT: Nobody seems to know what exactly a general strike achieves. Everyone agrees, though, that such a strike or bandh means a colossal economic loss and massive disruptions in normal public life. But all that does not seem to bother the leftist parties in India, the original sinners, and other champions of the culture of strikes. The nationwide strike that the Left and other opposition groups, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, have called next Monday can only mean another wasted day wherever it succeeds. And the success of a bandh is no measure of the organizers’ popularity or the people’s response to the issues on which it is called. If anything, such political actions run contrary to the democratic process because the political parties simply force their agenda with no regard for the popular will. It is the business of opposition parties to protest against a government’s policies or decisions that they find unfair. But parliamentary democracy offers several options and platforms for such opposition. Several court rulings have pointed out the “illegal” nature of bandhs, especially when public institutions and the government machinery are used, as in West Bengal, to force a strike.
The planned bandh over the Centre’s decision to deregulate fuel prices also brings into focus the conflict between old politics and the new economy. Only diehard practitioners of old politics refuse to see the larger economic sense that deregulation makes. No government in today’s world can afford to stick to the discredited ideas of a regulated economy. And given the pressure on every government to reduce fiscal deficits, it is suicidal for an economy to keep on subsidizing prices. A subsidy-laden economy not only distorts the reality in the energy sector, it also stunts the growth of the free market as a whole. But those who are driven by short-term political agendas only try to delay the inevitable. With the Left in India, however, the failure to see the economic reason is compounded by a strange obsession with an outdated ideology. The Left’s problem with the free market makes its politics anachronistic. Its own governments, in West Bengal and Kerala, have sought to take advantage of the free market. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee knows the battle against the free market is a losing one. Strikes against deregulation of prices or economic reforms in general increasingly look like desperate acts of losers.
Man killed with Azad a journalist
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| The body of Pandey, identified earlier as Sahdev by police |
G.S. RADHAKRISHNA AND TAPAS CHAKRABORTY, TT, July 3: The man killed with Maoist leader Azad in an encounter yesterday was a freelance Hindi journalist who was interviewing him, Andhra Pradesh police have said a day after wrongly identifying the second victim as a guerrilla named Sahdev.
The family of Maoist sympathiser and Uttarakhand-based journalist Hemachandra Pandey, 35, had earlier got in touch with rights activists such as poet Varavara Rao in Andhra after seeing his pictures in newspapers, captioned “Sahdev”.
In the 1990s, the police had shot dead an Urdu journalist, Gulam Rasool, along with a Maoist whom he was interviewing on Hyderabad’s outskirts.
Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, the Maoist No. 3, was camping with 20-25 guerrillas on a hillock in the Wankhidi forests of Adilabad to be interviewed by Pandey, a senior district police officer said.
Police patrols, tipped off about a Maoist leader’s visit, surrounded the hideout after noticing movements through their night-vision binoculars, he said. “When the guerrillas refused to surrender and began shooting, the police retaliated. The rest of the Maoists ran away after they found their leader shot along with the interviewer.”
Uttarakhand police, who have carried out a probe on a request from their Andhra counterparts, said Pandey had left his home in Pithoragarh, Kumaon, for Nagpur in Maharashtra on June 30 to do the interview. He apparently boarded a train from Haldiwani station, travelled to Delhi and then on to Nagpur.
Some of his friends and a brother, who is also a journalist, knew he was going on an assignment for a newspaper and a news channel, says the Uttarakhand police report that has been handed to the state government in Dehra Dun. The newspaper and the channel have denied commissioning any such interview.
Azad’s mother Karuna and the Maoists have alleged that Azad was arrested with another person on Thursday at Bitaburdi in Nagpur — where he had gone to take political classes for cadres — brought to Adilabad and shot in a fake encounter.
“My husband had informed me about his visit to Nagpur for a scoop but did not tell us about the interview with Azad,” Pandey’s wife Babita, who reached Hyderabad this evening to receive the body, said. “We were aghast to see his photo in the newspapers this morning.”
An officer in Adilabad said Pandey was identified as a freelance journalist from the visiting cards found in his pocket. “He did not have any accreditation card from any state government.”
Andhra home minister Sabita Indra Reddy said: “How can one identify a journalist in pitch darkness on a remote hillock without any ID card?”
Pandey, a resident of Deventhal village, 23km from Pithoragarh town, had dabbled in Left politics as a college student. He later developed contacts among the rebels who would often sneak into Pithoragarh from across the Nepal border, an officer in Pithoragarh said. “He wrote articles on the rebels’ activities for various newspapers and periodicals.”
A journalist in Pithoragarh said: “Pandey has been in the profession for seven years. He was never afraid to express his ideology.”
The Pithoragarh SP later told a TV channel that Pandey was not a journalist any more because he had not written anything recently for any publication. Local sources, however, said Pandey had got articles published recently in minor journals. They said Pandey did not have official accreditation as a journalist but carried out assignments for media houses.
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