Vehicles, which failed to move out of the hills because of the two-hour wheel jam, at Darjeeling bus stand. Picture by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, Nov. 11: Fourteen students of Rama Krishna Siksha Parishad (RKSP) today sat on a relay hunger strike at Chowrastha while 100 others from various schools gheraoed the ABGL office as part of the statehood movement under the leadership of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

The protesting schoolchildren said they believed that they had no future in Bengal and Gorkhaland was the panacea for all their woes.

“Till our demand is fulfiled, we will support all programmes related to Gorkhaland. I think we have no future in Bengal and the only solution is to have a separate state,” said Amardeep Chhetri, a Class XI student of RKSP who had volunteered to take part in the fast.

“When our teachers told us about the agitation, everybody in our class had raised their hands to sit for the hunger strike. However, only 14 of us were selected on the basis of physical fitness,” said Mukesh Chhetri, another student.

School students in front of the ABGL office on Ladenla Road and (below) at the relay hunger strike that began at Chowrastha in Darjeeling on Tuesday. Pictures by Suman Tamang

Kismat Chhetri, the president of the Morcha student front, said the plan was to give college goers the first chance to sit for the relay hunger strike. “But the school children wanted to be the first batch, so we relented,” he said.

Students who have gone out of town to pursue higher education have decided to form a welfare forum to help those who have stayed back. More than 50 students, currently enrolled in prestigious institutions like IIM (Indore), IIT (Kharagpur), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, and Jawaharlal Nehru University

(Delhi), are part of the forum.

“Students here are unaware of the requirements for admission in colleges across the country. They don’t know about the standard of admission test and find it difficult to get accommodation in cities. They have to be made aware of the scopes available as well as the difficulties and this is what the forum is going to do,” said Dawa Sherpa, a student of Presidency College in Calcutta. A website for dissemination of such information will be launched soon.

Most schools in the hills are likely to defer their annual exams for at least a week to facilitate their student’s participation in the agitation. The Morcha student wing has requested the schools to hold the exams after November 24, by which they expect the tripartite talks to be held in Delhi.

The student strike on November 13 has been deferred by a day.

The strike had been called to protest against the failure of police to arrest ABGL supporters who allegedly had pointed a pistol at a Morcha student rally on Saturday. Today’s gherao of the ABGL office was part of the protest.

“We could not find much in the investigations and have written to the subdivisional magistrate for a magisterial inquiry,” said a police officer.