Kolkata: The West Bengal police on Monday tightened security for chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri districts in north Bengal after a video, showing Jiban Singha, the absconding chief of the banned Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO), making a fresh demand for a separate state and threatening the CM, surfaced in the region.
Banerjee will be holding political and administrative meetings in Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri over the next three days.
“I caution Mamata Banerjee. There will be a bloodbath if you try to stop the formation of Kamtapur. You are using repressive measures against our people,” Singha said in the video. Perceived to be a direct threat to the chief minister, Singha also said, “Beware. Do not step on the soil of Kamtapur.
“The video showed Jiban Singha dressed in military fatigues and surrounded by more than a dozen guerillas armed with automatic rifles. We do not know where and when the video was shot but security has been tightened,” a senior state police official said on condition of anonymity.
Formed in 1995, the KLO carried out an armed struggle for a separate state for the local Koch Rajbanshi community which comprises a sizeable section of voters, especially in Cooch Behar district.
KLO militants were armed and trained in Assam by United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants. According to the KLO’s original doctrine, its objective is to form the state of Kamtapur comprising six districts of north Bengal and parts of Assam.
{{/usCountry}}KLO militants were armed and trained in Assam by United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants. According to the KLO’s original doctrine, its objective is to form the state of Kamtapur comprising six districts of north Bengal and parts of Assam.
{{/usCountry}}Officials of the state intelligence branch suspect that the KLO is trying to resurface in Bengal since the 2021 assembly polls in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged 30 of the 54 seats in the eight north Bengal districts although the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 213 of the state’s 294 seats against 77 wrested by the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP bagged 18 of the state’s 42 seats, creating a record. In north Bengal, it secured seven of the eight seats.
Soon after the assembly polls, BJP Lok Sabha member from Alipurduar and Union minister of state John Barla raised a demand for the formation of a separate state or union territory comprising districts in north Bengal.
In the video that surfaced on Sunday night, Singha, who spoke in the local dialect, said Barla and two other local BJP Lok Sabha members, Nisith Pramanik, who is also Union minister of state for home affairs, and Jayanta Roy, were supporting his demand for a separate state.
Barla and Pramanik were not available for comment but Jayanta Roy told the media that BJP believes that people of north Bengal deserve a separate state.
“However, such a state should belong to all people of this region, not a specific ethnic group,” said Roy.
This immediately triggered a slugfest and the BJP distanced itself from Roy’s comment.
“The BJP does not endorse any plan to divide Bengal. None of our MPs from the region raised such demands,” Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said in Kolkata.
The TMC accused the BJP of hatching a new conspiracy after failing to win the 2021 assembly polls.
“Did the BJP demand a separate state in its manifesto for the assembly polls? The party is now trying to create a disturbance since it cannot secure the people’s mandate in a fair contest,” said TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.
During her pre-poll visits to north Bengal, Mamata Banerjee announced some projects with grants for different communities figuring prominently in her list of sops. She also announced that 161 former members of the KLO will be employed as home guards.
This, however, did not stop Jiban Singha’s operations.
Dhankumar Burman, a suspected KLO guerilla was arrested near the India-Nepal border last month. Some documents, including coded messages Burman exchanged with Singha was recovered from his possession. He told the police during interrogation that he was assigned to collect funds in Nepal. His father, Sukumar Burman, was also a KLO activist who served jail time.
In April, the Assam Police arrested three suspected KLO linkmen from Dhubri district. In February, the Bengal police arrested two KLO linkmen from Siliguri.