West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh and scores of other party workers were today shown black flags and manhandled by Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) activists in Darjeeling. The GNLF raised slogans against the BJP and asked its delegates to leave Darjeeling hills immediately. They even accused Ghosh of disturbing the ‘peace and stability’ in the region.
During the attack, several BJP workers were injured critically. They had to rush to police station to save themselves from the goons.
Later, Ghosh refuted the GNLF allegation that he was in the hills to foment trouble and claimed that the protests against the BJP delegation were fuelled by the TMC.
"These protests are fuelled and funded by the TMC. Except GJM and Bimal Gurung, all other hill parties are mere extra players who are working on behalf of the TMC. The people of the hills are with the BJP and the GJM and that is why we have received so much support wherever we are going. "Hundreds of locals greeted us and shared their problems with us. The response has been tremendous," he said.
The BJP leader claimed that it was due to his initiative that peace has returned to Darjeeling. Ghosh said that he had talked to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, after which peace returned to the Darjeeling hills.
The BJP team was scheduled to visit various places in the hills and neighbouring Sikkim and hold meetings with its workers and the GJM leadership. However, their today’s schedule was marred by the protests.
Yesterday, Ghosh and his team had faced protests by supporters of Jan Andolan Party and expelled Gorkha Janamukti Morcha leader Binay Tamang during their visit to Kalimpong . Posters with the message 'BJP go back' and requesting the hill people to boycott the party's delegation were also found on the roads in the hills.
Expelled GJM leader and vice-chairman of the Board of Administrators (BoA), Anit Thapa too accused the BJP of trying to foment trouble in the hills. "What was it (BJP) doing for the three-and-a-half months when the hills were burning? Now that peace has returned, it wants to create trouble," he had alleged.
The rebel GJM group led by Binay Tamang, chairman of BoA and Thapa is slated to take out rallies in various places of the hills to protest the visit of the saffron party's delegation.
West Bengal's picturesque hill station of Darjeeling bounced back to life on September 27 following the withdrawal of the over three-month-long protest by the GJM. The withdrawal of its indefinite shutdown was announced after Rajnath Singh’s intervention, inviting agitators for talks to find an amicable solution to the issue.
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) had said that it incurred an estimated loss of Rs 2.5 crore as a fallout of the Gorkhaland agitation.
The GJM had been protesting here demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland.
