Golaghat: The senior vice president of Gorkha Autonomous Council Demand Committee (GACDC), Dil Bahadur Limboo, on Thursday stated that the Gorkhas of Assam have rejected the Gorkha Development Council (GDC), a statutory body of the state government created by the Assam Legislative Assembly under the Welfare of the Plain Tribes & Other Backward Castes Department.
Bahadur Limboo was speaking on the side-lines of an event organised to observe ‘Balidan Diwas’ (Martyrs’ Day) on the 79th death anniversary of Major Durga Malla. The event organised by the All Assam Gorkha Students’ Union (AAGSU) also commemorated the 31st anniversary of the Gorkha Bhasa Recognition Day at Padumpathar in Merapani, Golaghat.
The Gorkha Development Council (GDC) was set up by the state government on October 11, 2010, to reach out to the community members in a more inclusive manner.
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‘The AAGSU spearheaded the Gorkha Autonomous Council (GAC) movement with GACDC. In a joint meeting after consultations with important stakeholders within the community, the Assam government unanimously resolved to accept the GDC only on an experimental basis but never in lieu of the GAC. It is evident since 2016 that GDC doesn’t meet the expectations and aspirations of Gorkhas to be an indigenous community of Assam and exercise the right to self-determination since discrimination is still rampant,” Limboo stated.
The GACDC senior vice president said except few beneficiaries who received GI Sheets, sewing machines, laptops and a few other items, there has not been any development of the community members in real sense.
“What we Gorkhas want is indigenous status through gazette notification and right of self-determination by the creation of GAC with constitutional security,” the former AAGSU president Limboo said.
‘GACDC will celebrate its silver jubilee in 2024 and we all aspire to be original inhabitants of Gorkha Autonomous Council in Assam with indigenous status till then. I say this again, the GDC has failed to address our aspiration since it doesn’t have a single representative in the council from the district that gave the GAC movement its first martyr Birbol Limbo, and therefore, it needs to go,” he said.
A Gorkha born in Dehradun, Shaheed Durga Malla fought against the British in the Azad Hind Fauz and was hanged in Delhi in 1944. His statue, donated by the Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in the Parliament House complex on December 17, 2004, in the presence of Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, then BJP president L K Advani and other Union ministers and members of Parliament. He was the first Gorkha soldier to sacrifice his life for the cause of the Indian independence movement.
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