SIKKIM OBSERVER Saturday April 20-26,
2013
Sikkim University foundation
stone has finally been laid to rest!
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President Pranab Mukherjee
unveiling the plaque at the foundation stone laying ceremony of Sikkim
University at Manan Kendra, Gangtok, on Tuesday (PIB).
Gangtok, April 19: Aggrieved landowners’ threat worked. President Pranab Mukherjee, who was
to lay the foundation stone of Sikkim University, in Yangang, South Sikkim, on
Tuesday failed to do the job. Instead, he was flown on a chopper from Namchi to
Gangtok to unveil the plaque of the foundation stone.
The day after the President left here, Chief Minister Pawan Chamling,
escorted by his cabinet members and ruling party supporters, on Thursday held
another foundation laying ceremony in Yangang and finally placed the foundation
stone at the university campus.
One local daily reported that the Chief Minister handed over the
foundation stone to SU Vice-Chancellor Tanka B. Subba during the function at
Yangang.
Sikkim University, established in 2007, continues to court controversy
and the foundation laying episodes are a reminder that all’s not well with the
concerned parties. Some members of a prominent family in Yangang, whose land
has been acquired by the government for the SU, earlier issued notices to
concerned parties, including government departments, regarding the illegal
manner in which land was acquired by the government. If the issue is not
settled amicably the concerned parties may take the matter to the court.
The foundation stone laying
ceremony of Sikkim University at its campus in Yangang by the President, scheduled
for April 16, was abruptly cancelled at the last moment. A section of
landowners from Yangang on April 12 threatened to go on hunger strike on the
eve and during Mukherjee’s visit to Yangang.
“We again appeal the State government and Chief Minister Pawan Chamling
to fulfill the promises given four years ago to the landowners of Yangyang
before the private holdings were acquired for the university. If the State
government continues to play with our future and demands, we will strongly
protest against the government during the foundation stone laying function”,
said Sunil Rai and other eight landowners.
“The protest is not against the President and the function but against
the State government. The protest would start from April 15 with a fast. We
will not vacate our lands until the promises made to us are fulfilled by the
State government”, said the landowners.
They recalled that the State Government had promised suitable
compensation, rehabilitation within Yangang and permanent employment in the
university for members of those families whose lands were acquired.
While the authorities’ lame excuse for not holding the function in
Yangang was due to lack of adequate space at the helipad in Yangang for the
choppers to land the main reason was the threat given by some local residents
of Yangang to register their protest against the State Government on issues
relating to resettlement and employment of landowners during the President’s
visit.
The symbolic laying of the foundation stone ceremony held in Gangtok on
April 16 was officially declared as a “token” function. The President actually
unveiled the plaque of the foundation stone during the function in Gangtok at
Manan Kenra.
Speaking at the function, Mukherjee said Sikkim University has the
potential to emerge as a hub of knowledge, research and innovation for
countries of South East Asia as well as rest of India.
The President paid a brief visit to MG Marg, where he offered a khada to the bust of Mahatma Gandhi. He
was welcomed by a delegation of local businessmen during this visit.
On Tuesday, the President inaugurated the Siddheshwara Dhaam at Solopokh near Namchi in South Sikkim.
Only Golay to decide on
alliance with Cong: SKM
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Gangtok, April 19: The newly-formed Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) has indicated that only
its leader PS Golay will decide whether to align with the Congress party in the
State for the ensuing Assembly polls, scheduled for early 2014.
Reacting to SPCC President NB Bhandari’s reported decision to severe ties
with the Democratic Alliance of Sikkim (DAS) and his readiness to align with
Golay, SKM spokesman MN Dahal said only Golay will decide on the issue.
Briefing reporters here at a press conference, Dahal said when Golay
officially takes over the party as its chief the issue of electoral alliance
with the Congress party will be taken up.
Last week, Bhandari said he was willing to hold talks with the SKM to
take on the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) in the next Assembly
elections.
Meanwhile, Golay has been touring the State with his ‘Parivartan’
(change) campaign. During his tour of the SDF bastion of South Sikkim this
week, Golay said, “I am strong enemy of corruption,” hinting that corruption
would be one of the main political issues of his party.
Though Golay formed his SKM in February this year he is legally still a
ruling party MLA. According to reports, Golay is likely to switch over to SKM
soon. As of now, many are still adopting a wait-and-watch attitude towards the
SKM.
Caste combination will play a vital role
in 2014 Assembly polls
Jigme N Kazi
Chief Minister Pawan Chamling’s 19-year rule in the former
kingdom has never been easy. He is now faced with the biggest political
challenge of his tenure; his protégé and four-term legislator Prem Singh Tamang
(Golay), who has been defying his diktats for quite some time and with
considerable success, has already formed his own political outfit to dislodge
him.
If you carefully
analyze SDF’s performance in the last two Assembly polls held in 2004 and 2009
the party was lucky to have come to power and luckier to have ‘won’ 31 and all
the 32 seats in the last two polls respectively. But while SDF claims to have
got the ‘mandate’ of the people the level of support that it got during the
last two Assembly polls is not too impressive.
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For instance, in the 2004 Assembly polls, the former chief
minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari-led Congress party got almost 30 per cent of the
votes polled although it secured only one seat, the lone Sangha, in the
Assembly. It must reminded that in the 2004 Assembly polls the SDF ‘won’ four
seats even before the poll date that made a huge difference in favour of SDF. The
nomination papers of three candidates of the Congress party were rejected in
the SDF bastion of south district. One of Congress party’s tribal candidates,
Palden Bhutia, was ‘kidnapped’ when he went to file his nomination papers in
Mangan, headquarters of north district.
But despite the
tough situation that the Congress faced in the 2004 polls the fact that nearly
30 per cent of the voters voted for the party cannot easily by bypassed. Much
the same situation prevailed in the 2009 Assembly polls when the Congress and
the combined opposition received nearly 35 per cent of the votes polled.
Golay’s new party
– Sikkim Krantikari Morcha – is expected to make a dent into the SDF vote-bank,
which was initially mainly the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) such as Limbus,
Tamangs, Rais, Mangars and Gurungs, who belong to the majority Nepali
community. However, the Tamangs and Limbus are now included in the State’s list
of Scheduled Tribes along with the Bhutias and Lepchas. The blame for failure
of the concerned authorities to secure Assembly seat reservation for Tamangs
and Limbus as STs will be placed squarely on the Chamling Government, which
promised reservation of seats for the two communities.
Of all the
communities in Sikkim the Bhutias, who once ruled the former kingdom for nearly
eight hundred years, have been on the receiving end during Chamling’s tenure as
chief minister. Their support is vital for anyone to come to power. Due to
Chamling’s failure to scrap mega hydel projects in Dzongu – a Lepcha reserve –
as demanded by the Lepchas, the Lepchas remain a disenchanted lot with the
present dispensation.
Despite the State
Congress party chief NB Bhandari’s failure to take Chamling head-on he still
commands support among a sizable section of his own Bahun-Chettri community.
However, Bhandari’s recent appeal for unity among the opposition to take on
Chamling found few takers. If Golay’s new party gets a respectable following in
the State Bhandari may be forced to make an offer that the rebel ruling party
leader may find it difficult to refuse.
Even veteran politician Ram Chandra Poudyal, who still has a
respectable following among the Bahun-Chettris, said recently, “I will support
Golay if he proves that he is capable of leading a united front to dislodge
Chamling.”
Politics in Sikkim has always been based on ethnic/caste
combinations and this time, too, this factor will play a major role in the
outcome of the 2014 Assembly elections.
Editorial
SIKKIMESE UNITY
Bhandari And Golay Must Come
Together
The ensuing Assembly
elections in Sikkim, slated for early 2014, is perhaps the most important
exercise in the democratic process for the survival and success of Sikkim and
the Sikkimese people. Betrayed several times by those who made tall promises
but failed to perform, the Sikkimese people are now in desperate need of people
who can be trusted to save them from oblivion. If the next lot of elected
representatives in the Assembly become mere puppets and let one man rule
supreme in Sikkim the future of coming generations of Sikkimese people is not
only very bleak but there would be no future for them in their homeland.
And that is why the political
leadership of the Opposition must play a vital role for the long-term interest
of Sikkim and the Sikkimese people. Former Chief Minister NB Bhandari has
reportedly taken the lead in extending an olive branch to ruling party’s
dissident leader Prem Singh Tamang (Golay). If this is a fact then it is a
welcome move. Golay must respond positively. The two may not come together in a
single party but a common platform may be formed to go ahead in the same
direction. Priority must be placed in choosing right candidates to take on the
ruling party. Money-power can only be fought by people-power. This has been
Sikkim’s experience in the past three and half decades.
How India and US put an end to Sikkim’s distinct
international status
By PRASHANT JHA
From confidently predicting that India would not incorporate
Sikkim to reporting on its merger in 1975, the U.S. watched events closely but
adopted a hands-off approach. Sikkim’s demise was a joint venture of the two
largest democracies – US and India.
(L to R) Kewal
Singh, Foreign Secretary, Government of India, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal
and Kazi Lhendup Dorji Khangsarpa during the signing of the Government of
Sikkim Act 1974 in Gangtok on July 4, 1974 (Pix: The Hindu)
When protests first broke out in Sikkim in 1973, India
stepped in and took over the internal administration of the then kingdom. This
went beyond the 1950 India-Sikkim treaty, which had given Delhi control only
over Gangtok’s external affairs, defence and communication.
Many saw it as an instance of Indian “expansionism,” but
the United States believed that the protests were “spontaneous,” and India had
not engineered the troubles but only “taken advantage of it.” It predicted
Sikkim would remain an Indian protectorate. A year-and-a-half later, when India
first made Sikkim an associate state, the Americans were taken aback. By the
middle of 1975, the U.S. had come around to accepting Sikkim’s integration into
India as “natural.”
In those two years, U.S. representatives in New Delhi,
Calcutta, Hong Kong, Kathmandu, London, Washington and New York exchanged over
250 diplomatic cables on Sikkim. These are as a part of the “Kissinger Cables,”
now made available by WikiLeaks. From these cables, The Hindu has pieced together the
fascinating picture of the troubles in Sikkim, as seen through American eyes.
The 1973 spring
On April 9, 1973, the Government told the Lok Sabha that
a polarisation had developed between “the Maharaja of Sikkim on one side and
the popularly elected political leaders and masses on the other.” The Chogyal,
as the monarch was known, had then requested India “to take over the
administration of the whole of Sikkim.”
The next day, Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in
a cable (1973NEWDE04127_b, confidential) that “basic elements for discontent”
were already there. The Indians, he said, were unlikely to allow the Chogyal to
“take back even the limited internal administrative responsibility.” But the
long-term problem for India would be to devise a “representational system that
will satisfy the 75 percent Nepali majority, protect rights of indigenous
minority, and preserve Chogyal as titular chief of state.” The Ambassador
predicted India would “prefer to preserve” the existing treaty relationship
rather than incorporate Sikkim, as it provides them “ample defense and
administrative flexibility,” while avoiding adding “new troubled
tribal/linguistic element” to the polity. In another cable, two days later, (1973NEWDE04291_b, confidential),
the Ambassador argued that Indian action may have “saved the position of the
Chogyal,” and urged that charges against India not be taken “at face value.”
But others were sceptical. A Sikkimese princess blamed
“low-level Indian intelligence agents” for stirring up trouble (1973HONGK03595_b, limited official
use). An Indian journalist said he had heard from a West Bengal
MP, who was told by an MEA official, that Indian action was also a “deliberate
message to Nepal and Bhutan” (1973NEWDE04833_b, limited official
use).
The power-shift
An agreement in May between India, the Chogyal, and
Sikkim parties committed to a “fully responsible government in Sikkim with a
more democratic constitution...elections based on adult suffrage which will
give equitable representation to all sections.” In January 1974, India’s
Election Commission proposed a 32-member Assembly for Sikkim. Elections in
April resulted in an overwhelming mandate for the pro-India Sikkim Congress,
led by Kazi Lhendup Dorji. In June, the elected Assembly passed a new
constitution and a resolution on economic integration with India.
In a cable on June 21, 1974 (1974NEWDE08298_b, confidential),
U.S. diplomats noted that the constitution reduced the Chogyal to a titular
role, and endorsed India’s “extensive authority” in internal Sikkim affairs.
The Chogyal now had few options left — to abdicate, to leave the country
without formally abdicating, to remain a constitutional monarch, or organise
clandestine opposition from among minorities. “Prospects for the long-term
survival of the Royal House do not look good.”
The Chogyal rejected the constitution, sparking protests
from both sides. The U.S. now felt India would not hesitate to “invoke power”
to declare the constitution if the Chogyal did not consent(1974NEWDE08366_b, confidential).
U.S. diplomats in India, in communication with the State Department, hoped the
“U.S. government can avoid any official comment” since Sikkim had “no
international status,” and elections reflected the will of the Nepali-majority.
These developments, it noted, would have taken place 25 years ago “had Nehru,
in a fit of sentiment, not decided against Vallabhai Patel’s advice to provide
a special status for the mountain kingdom.”
After failed attempts to stall the constitution, and a
strong message by India to pay heed to the majority wishes, the Chogyal signed
on to the new arrangement.
From associate ...
The next twist in the Sikkim saga happened in September.
The government introduced a Constitution Amendment Bill in the Parliament which
declared Sikkim shall be “associated with India”; and give the State two seats
in Parliament.
This marked a rupture. In a cable on September 4 (1974NEWDE11760_b, secret),
the Embassy in New Delhi said it shared the “general uncertainty” about why
India was moving so “swiftly”, given that an MEA official had told the U.S.
they had no intention of “altering the protectorate relationship with Sikkim”,
and Chogyal had done little to prompt India to “degrade his status” further.
Perhaps, the cable speculated, India had come across “less conspicuous evidence
that Chogyal and his supporters are secretly plotting against Indian
authorities, perhaps with Chinese encouragement”.
The next day, on September 5 (1974NEWDE11835_b, confidential), the U.S.
said that while Indian motivations were “murky”, “Sikkim was now a part of
India”.
The State Department chose not to publicly comment when
asked about developments in Sikkim the following week. This was noted by the
MEA, which appreciated that the U.S. had been sensitive to “GOI concerns on the
issue” (1974NEWDE12115_b, confidential).
…to India’s 22nd state
On April 10, 1975, the U.S. Embassy in Delhi reported
that India had “disbanded” the Chogyal’s palace guard in Gangtok, and he was
under “house arrest” (1975NEWDE04815_b, confidential).
The Sikkim Congress had “proposed what appeared to be full integration of
Sikkim into the Indian Union of States” and called for abolition of the
“oppresive and undemocratic institution of the Chogyal for all times”.
In a cable the next day (1975NEWDE04921_b, confidential),
U.S. diplomats reported that the Sikkim Assembly had now abolished the
institution of the Chogyal and declared itself to be a “constituent unit” of
India. The U.S. continued to feel that India “was being forced into taking
actions it would rather not take”, but if it had to choose between the Kazi and
Chogyal, it would “opt for the people”. A referendum on April 14 supported the
Sikkim Congress stand.
Through the endgame, the U.S. stuck to its “hands-off”
approach. On April 16, 1975, a signed cable from Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, reiterated the position (1975STATE086460_b, confidential),
explaining that criticism of India may be welcomed in “Nepal, Pakistan or
China” but would not be “productive” and only create “new and serious bilateral
problems” and potentially heighten “tensions in the Himalayas”.
On May 16, with presidential assent, Sikkim became
India’s 22nd State. In a thoughtful cable the same day (1975NEWDE06554_b, confidential),
U.S. diplomats noted the immediate factors that had led to the merger, but
emphasised that it was the outcome of a “century-long historical process” and
had an element of “geographic inevitability”. (The Hindu)
IHM bids farewell to 3rd year
students
Gangtok, April 19:
The Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) Principal, JT Gyaltsen, said he was
happy that more and more students from the State are now joining the institute
unlike before when most of the students were from outside the State.
Speaking at the Annual
Celebration Day-cum-Farewell for the 3rd year students at Sajong,
Rumtek, yesterday, Gyaltsen said the performance of the 3rd and 1st
year students was “excellent”. He added that job placement for the outgoing
students is “100%”.
Zilla Panchayat President Lhakpa
Doma, the chief guest of the function, spoke of the need to be disciplined and
punctual in all aspects of the students’ life.
The cultural programme organized
by 1st year students was most entertaining and unique as it was held
in an informal atmosphere involving most of the students who took part in a
variety of programmes.
Some of the outgoing students
spoke of their time at the institute and thanked the Principal and members of
the staff for their help and guidance.
Distribution of prizes and
awards, including certificates for outgoing and meritorious students, was also
a part of the annual function.
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