HC refuses stay on GTA poll results

Justice Dipankar Gupta refused to pass an interim order on a plea by All India Gorkha League (AIGL) and directed that the parties in the case would abide by the final outcome of the case.

The AIGL had moved the petition earlier this month seeking a stay on the GTA election and its counsel Bikash Bhattacharya today prayed for an interim stay order.

Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) President Subash Ghisingh's counsel Arunabha Ghosh submitted that as the matter involved the future of lakhs of Darjeeling residents, it be taken up at the earliest.

Justice Gupta directed that the matter would come up for hearing on August 10.

Oath-taking of elected members of the first GTA, which replaces the earlier Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, is scheduled on August four.

Ghisingh had on June 14 filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court challenging the GTA Act 2011 claiming that it was ultra vires to the Constitution.

The petition claimed that the GTA Act could not come into force in Darjeeling Hills without amending the Constitution.

The Constitution provides that if the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Act, 1988 (DGHC) was repealed, the entire area would come under the purview of the Indian Panchayat and Municipalities Act, the petition stated.

If the DGHC was scrapped, the new act could not come into force without amending the Constitution, Ghising's petition claimed.

The court directed Gorkha Janmukti Morcha President Bimal Gurung, who has been made a respondent in the case, to file his affidavit in opposition to the petition within August four.