Thaindian News

Kolkata, June 16 (IANS) The West Bengal government has decided to form a three-member fact verification panel to look into the recommendations of a high-powered committee on the issue of area demarcation in the proposed Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).

It also announced here Saturday that the elections schedule for the GTA would be announced very soon.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) has demanded 398 additional mouzas (area less than a sub-division) to be included in the GTA in north Bengal hills, but the Justice Shyamal Sen committee said only five mouzas could form a part of it.

Upset over the committee’s report, the GJM representatives Saturday met Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and expressed their reservations on it.

“We have demanded rejection of the Shyamal Sen committee report. This report is a humiliation for us. The chief minister has said that a fact verification committee will be formed, headed by a secretary of the state government to look into the report,” said GJM general secretary Roshan Giri.

State chief secretary Samar Ghosh said the fact verification panel was being set up in the light of the grievances expressed by the GJM.

“The government will come out with a notification for the elections of the GTA by the end of this month. The notification for delimitation of the areas that will go to elections will be out the next week,” Ghosh told reporters.

Citing the terms and conditions of the GTA agreement he stated that the GTA elections and the panel’s report cannot be linked.

“Elections would be first held in the areas under the previous Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC),” said Ghosh.

The committee was set up July 29, 2011 after the GJM demanded 398 additional mouzas spread over Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts to be included in the GTA — the new hill council that would run the administration in Darjeeling area.

The committee, which considered parameters such as homogeneity (whether over 50 percent of the mouza’s population was Gorkha), geographical continuity, compactness and ground reality, said only five mouzas - two in Jalpaiguri district and three in Darjeeling district - fulfilled all the criteria for being part of the GTA.