Earthquake in Sikkim & history

Earthquake history

The earthquake activity in this region is due to the Indian plate diving (thrusting) beneath the Eurasian plate. The state is mainly mountainous and underlain by several thrust faults. Most significant are the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT), the Main Central Thrust (MCT) and the Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFF).

Seismic Hazard

All districts of the state of Sikkim lie in Zone IV. Since the earthquake database in India is still incomplete, especially with regards to earthquakes prior to the historical period (before 1800 A.D.), these zones offer a rough guide of the earthquake hazard in any particular region and need to be regularly updated .

Largest Instrumented Earthquake in Sikkim

19 November 1980 - Near Gangtok (Sikkim-West Bengal Border region), 6.1 Ms (PAS)

19:00:46.9 UTC, 27.39N, 88.75E, 17 kms depth

Eight people were injured in Gangtok and there was also minor damage reported from the city. the quake was felt in eastern and north-eastern India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

Significant Earthquakes in Sikkim

The following list briefly outlines known earthquakes in this region. General locations are provided for historical events for which "generalized" epicentral co-ordinates are available. Some events which were significant for other reasons are also included. This list will be updated whenever newer information is available. Please note that Magnitude and Intensity are NOT THE SAME. All events are within the state or union territory covered on this page unless stated otherwise.

Acronyms Used:

D=Depth, OT=Origin Time, Mw=Moment Magnitude, Ms=Surface Wave magnitude, Mb=Body Wave Magnitude, ML=Local Magnitude, M?=Magnitude Type unknown

15 January 1934 - Indo-Nepal Border region, Mw 8.0

14:21:25 IST / 08:43:25 UTC, 26.50N, 86.50E

Nearly 10,500 people were killed in Bihar and Nepal. Damage was also reported from many towns in Sikkim.

12 January 1965 - West of Gangtok (Indo-Nepal Border region), 6.1 (TS)

13:32:24 UTC, 27.60N, 88.00E

19 November 1980 - Near Gangtok (Sikkim-West Bengal Border region), 6.1 Ms (PAS)

19:00:46.9 UTC, 27.39N, 88.75E, 17 kms depth

Eight people were injured in Gangtok and there was also minor damage reported from the city. The quake was felt in eastern and north-eastern India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

21 August 1988 - Udaipur Gahri, Nepal (Indo-Nepal Border region), Mw 6.8 (NEIC)

23:09:09 UTC / 04:39:09 IST, 26.755N 86.616

Nearly 900 people were killed in the border districts of Nepal and Bihar, India. Damage was also reported from Kathmandu and Sikkim. Felt over much of northern and eastern India and much of Nepal. Felt as far as New Delhi.

14 February 2006 - Mana, North Sikkim, Mw 5.3

27.377 N, 88.362 E, D=020.1 kms, OT=00:55:23 UTC

A moderate earthquake struck the Sikkim Himalayas on 14 February 2006 at 06:25 AM local time resulting in two deaths and minor damage to property in the state of Sikkim, India. It had a magnitude of Mw=5.3. This is the strongest earthquake in this immediate region since a Mw=6.3 earthquake on 19 November 1980.

18 May 2007 - Nambu, North Sikkim, Mb 4.6

27.302 N, 88.159 E, D=021.1 kms, OT=12:40:02 UTC

A light earthquake struck the Sikkim Himalayas on 18 May 2007 at 18:10 PM local time resulting in some panic in the state of Sikkim, India. It had a magnitude of Mb=4.6.

20 May 2007 - Singyang, North Sikkim, Mb 5.0

27.303 N, 88.191 E, D=021.1 kms, OT=14:18:18 UTC

A moderate earthquake struck the Sikkim Himalayas on 20 May 2007 at 19:48 PM local time resulting in some panic and minor damage in the state of Sikkim, India. It had a magnitude of Mb=5.0.

HIGH COURT RAP FOR CENTRAL GOVT AND STATE GOVERNMENT OVER GTA PACT

KOLKATA, 17 SEPT: Calcutta High Court criticised the state government and Union government on Friday, for failing to address issues relating to the impact of an alleged influx of people from Nepal on demographics in India. The criticism comes long after the ink has dried on the memorandum of agreement (MoA) between the state, Union Government and the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) for the formation of Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA).

“The matter is extremely serious in nature. The respondents are taking the matter very lightly,” the Division Bench of Chief Justice Mr Justice JN Patel and Mr Justice Asim Roy said during a public interest litigation (PIL) hearing on the misutilisation of Articles six and seven of the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950, which some say is leading to an influx of people of Nepali origin to India.

The provisions in these Articles confer exclusive and restricted national treatment to the treaty beneficiaries in India and Nepal.

According to the PIL, which was submitted by Mr Kallol Guha Thakurta and moved by Jan Chetna, a Siliguri-based voluntary organisation, an increasing number of people of Nepali origin are coming to India and enrolling themselves on the voters’ list in many constituencies in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and parts of the Dooars in West Bengal,

Resentment among people of non-Nepali origin about the inclusion of certain areas in the GTA's jurisdiction was manifested in a bandh in Siliguri. The bandh was part of a two-day agitation that took place on the day the MoA was signed. Several organisations are opposed to the GJMM’s demand for inclusion of eight wards from the Siliguri Municipal Corporation and 196 moujas each from the Terai and the Dooars in the GTA's jurisdiction.

The Election Commission has failed to prevent this illegal inclusion, it was submitted. It is violating Article 326 of the Constitution which deals with adult suffrage. Under the Indo-Nepal-Great Britain tripartite agreement in 1947, soldiers who are subjects of Nepal recruited in certain Gorkha regiments are debarred from possessing voting rights in India, it had been submitted. Their progeny is also not given this right.

Besides entering India from Nepal, a sizeable number of persons of Nepali origin are going to Bhutan and then coming over to India, it was submitted. As there is no extradition treaty between India and Bhutan, these people are not registered as foreigners. It was further submitted that there is rising apprehension that north Bengal and north east India will at a point of time be swamped by them.

The issue of the change of demographic pattern is a significant factor in the inclusion of area under Gorkha Terriotorial Administration's (GTA) jurisdiction. Incidentally, the director of census operations is a member of the high-powered committee which had been formed to look into the issue of identification of GTA's area from Siliguri, Terai and Dooars, keeping in mind the “compactness, contiguity, homogeneity and ground-level situations.”

 

Courtsey : The Statesman

The GJMM is paying households of Dooars & Terai Rs 30 a day to hoist the flag of GJMM before the survey, villagers alleged.

From rooftop to rooftop, on treetops, on shops and in the middle of tea gardens, the flag of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today flutters across much of the Dooars and the Terai plains, a visual makeover ahead of a government survey to assess the strength of the GJM’s claim on this territory.

Most of the flags have come up over the past month, irrespective of whether those living in the houses are ...Gorkas or Adivasis. This was after GJM chief Bimal Gurung issued a diktat not only to Gorkhas but also to Adivasis “who want to come under the Gorkha Territorial Administration”.

It is meant to be a show of numerical supremacy ahead of the planned visit by survey teams, which will be constituted by a committee comprising retired Calcutta judge Shyamal Sen, GJM representatives and those of the state and Central governments, to determine which areas should come under the GTA. The GJM has demanded nearly 400 mouzas in the plains — around 200 each in the Dooars and the Terai — in addition to the entire hill subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.

At Malbazar, Nagrakata and Banarhat in the Dooars, areas dominated by Adivasis, the display is the result of a combination of fear and alleged incentive. The GJM has been paying households Rs 30 a day to hoist the flag, villagers alleged.

Robinson, a tea labourer at Banarhat, said he has hoisted the flag because he could not afford not to. “We don’t want to be included in the GTA. We are Adivasis, living here for decades, but so many Nepalese and Bhutanese people have settled here that we are now almost reduced to a minority. Since they have put the GJM flag on their roofs, we have to do the same.”

Binay Tigga, another labourer, admitted he was being paid. “For the last one month, we are being given Rs 30 a day. They call us ‘the 67 people’ because our daily wage is Rs 67 while tea labourers in Darjeeling get Rs 90. They have told us that for a couple of months, till the survey is done, we can earn Rs 97, which is more than what tea labourers in Darjeeling earn.”

Shortly after the notification for the joint verification committee had been issued, Gurung made a speech at Nagrakata, where he announced the diktat on the flags and said that every resident must be home when the survey teams come calling.

A senior member of the GJM central committee conceded, “We are concerned about the Dooars region since it is a traditional stronghold of the Adivasis. To influence the views of the committee, our leaders have urged the people to put up GJM flags on their houses.”

Leaders among the Adivasis are fuming. Jhon Barla, block president (Banarhat-Nagrakata) of the All Bengal Adivasi Vikash Parishad, said, “The committee comprises only representatives from the government and the GJM. The ABAVP and other groups have not been made a party to this. Adivasis will never allow such a demarcation.” He also wondered where the GJM has found funding for the Rs 30 allegedly being paid to each Adivasi household every day.

The committee, formed on July 29, met for the first time on August 31. It then decided to publish a newspaper advertisement seeking suggestions and complaints, if any, but is yet to do so. Given six months to submit a report, it has decided to meet again in November.

Source : Indian Express

ILLEGAL FORMATION OF THE NEW BOARD OF SILIGURI JALPAIGURI DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

The decision to keep the Siliguri and Jalpaiguri civic chiefs out of the development authority for the two towns has not gone down well with at least one of them.

Only one Congress representative is on the 12-member board which has at least five Trinamul leaders.

 The Congress chairperson of the Jalpaiguri municipality, Mohan Bose, has questioned how he and Siliguri mayor Gangotri Datta could have been left out of the board of the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority. The civic chiefs have been on the SJDA board since it was first formed in 1980.

Today, SJDA chairperson and Siliguri MLA Rudranath Bhattacharya announced that a 12-member board including him and the chief executive officer of the development authority as member-secretary has been formed.

"We were told about the formation of the new SJDA board by the principal secretary of state urban development department on September 9. The new members would be informed about their selection so that they can carry out necessary duties and responsibilities in the future days," Bhattacharya said.

The other 10 members on the board are the district magistrates of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the principal secretary of the urban development department, the divisional commissioner of Jalpaiguri, the MLAs of Matigara-Naxalbari and Rajganj Shankar Malakar and Khageswar Roy, Siliguri deputy mayor Ranjan Silsharma and Trinamul leaders Jyotsna Agarwal and Chandan Bhowmik. The 12th member is Nantu Saha, SJDA chairperson said, but could not furnish details on him.

"As far as my knowledge goes, there are laid down rules that the civic chiefs of towns which come within the ambit of the development authority should be members. Any change in the composition of the board has to be made through a gazette notification and till date, we do not have information of any such notification," said Bose. The reaction from Gangotri was mild. "We cannot comment on the SJDA board," she said.

Malakar is the only Congress member on the board. Asked why the MLA and MP of Jalpaiguri and the sabhadhipatis of Siliguri mahakuma parishad and Jalpaiguri zilla parishad were left out, Bhattacharya said: "A board has been formed and it would be wrong to interpret its composition in terms of political colours."



But many pointed out that when the SJDA was under the Left Front, Congress leaders like Mohan Bose and Gangotri had been on the board. "This time Jalpaiguri MLA Sukhbilash Burma, Alipurduar MLA Debprasad Roy, Phansidewa MLA Sunil Tirkey have been left out. All of them are from the Congress, not even from the Left. Last time, Debprasad Roy, Mohan Bose, Gangotri Datta were all on the board despite being from the Opposition party," said a source.









ILLEGAL FORMATION OF THE NEW BOARD OF SILIGURI JALPAIGURI DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

The decision to keep the Siliguri and Jalpaiguri civic chiefs out of the development authority for the two towns has not gone down well with at least one of them.

Only one Congress representative is on the 12-member board which has at least five Trinamul leaders.

The Congress chairperson of the Jalpaiguri municipality, Mohan Bose, has questioned how he and Siliguri mayor Gangotri Datta could have been left out of the board of the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority. The civic chiefs have been on the SJDA board since it was first formed in 1980.

Today, SJDA chairperson and Siliguri MLA Rudranath Bhattacharya announced that a 12-member board including him and the chief executive officer of the development authority as member-secretary has been formed.

"We were told about the formation of the new SJDA board by the principal secretary of state urban development department on September 9. The new members would be informed about their selection so that they can carry out necessary duties and responsibilities in the future days," Bhattacharya said.

The other 10 members on the board are the district magistrates of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the principal secretary of the urban development department, the divisional commissioner of Jalpaiguri, the MLAs of Matigara-Naxalbari and Rajganj Shankar Malakar and Khageswar Roy, Siliguri deputy mayor Ranjan Silsharma and Trinamul leaders Jyotsna Agarwal and Chandan Bhowmik. The 12th member is Nantu Saha, SJDA chairperson said, but could not furnish details on him.

"As far as my knowledge goes, there are laid down rules that the civic chiefs of towns which come within the ambit of the development authority should be members. Any change in the composition of the board has to be made through a gazette notification and till date, we do not have information of any such notification," said Bose. The reaction from Gangotri was mild. "We cannot comment on the SJDA board," she said.

Malakar is the only Congress member on the board. Asked why the MLA and MP of Jalpaiguri and the sabhadhipatis of Siliguri mahakuma parishad and Jalpaiguri zilla parishad were left out, Bhattacharya said: "A board has been formed and it would be wrong to interpret its composition in terms of political colours."

But many pointed out that when the SJDA was under the Left Front, Congress leaders like Mohan Bose and Gangotri had been on the board. "This time Jalpaiguri MLA Sukhbilash Burma, Alipurduar MLA Debprasad Roy, Phansidewa MLA Sunil Tirkey have been left out. All of them are from the Congress, not even from the Left. Last time, Debprasad Roy, Mohan Bose, Gangotri Datta were all on the board despite being from the Opposition party," said a source.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha wants Mamata to refrain to form separate Alipurduar District.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has opposed any district reorganisation in areas of the Dooars and the Terai it wants under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration until the report of a committee examining the authority’s territorial jurisdiction is submitted.

The move comes against the backdrop of plans by the Mamata Banerjee government to carve a separate Alipurduar district out of the existing Jalpaiguri. All the 199 mouzas each from the Dooars and the Terai that the Morcha wants under the GTA fall within Jalpaiguri district.

“Unless a final shape is given to the territory of the GTA, we do not think there should be any reorganisation of the districts which involves areas we have demanded within the GTA. Such a move will go against the spirit of the GTA agreement signed recently,” Morcha spokesperson Harka Bahadur Chhetri said here today after a meeting of the party’s “core” committee.

The meeting, presided over by party chief Bimal Gurung, had been called to discuss the stand the Morcha should take at the all-party meeting called by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday to discuss a new name for West Bengal as well as the planned reorganisation of five districts.

“We discussed the issue of the reorganisation of the districts thoroughly and we believe the issue is of immense importance for us,” Chhetri, also the Morcha MLA from Kalimpong, said.

The party wants Mamata to refrain from taking decisions on reorganisation of the districts covering the Dooars and the Terai, some parts of which fall in Jalpaiguri and the others in Darjeeling.

The hill party is also worried that most pockets dominated by the Nepali-speaking people in the Dooars are closer to Alipurduar, which is proposed to be made a district, than Jalpaiguri town. The pockets come under the Kalchini and Madharihat blocks, now part of Jalpaiguri’s of Alipurduar subdivision. Once Alipurduar is upgraded to a district, Kalchini and Madharihat are likely to fall under it.

Source : The Telegraph

Gorkha was a Nepalese principality whose king, Prithvi Narayan Shah

All areas of old Assam identified for autonomy are now separate States. GJM leader Bimal Gurung believes that that is also Darjeeling’s future.

Addressing a victory rally in Darjeeling last week, Mr Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha triumphantly compared the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration with the Bodoland Territorial Council. In time, he is confident that Gorkhaland will be a full-fledged state like Nagaland. That is his “ultimate goal” he declared while Ms Mamata Banerjee was assuring people that “there is nothing to fear, Bengal is not being divided”.

The nomenclature — Bodoland, Nagaland, Gorkhaland — implies what is not. Bodos and Nagas are sons of the soil. The Nepalese are not, not even when their leaders reinvent them as Gorkha which, too, is not an indigenous word. Gorkha was a Nepalese principality whose king, Prithvi Narayan Shah, conquered other fiefdoms to create the kingdom of Nepal in 1769.

Everyone comes from somewhere. Identity depends on when you came and how you see yourself. The original Gorkha League constitution called Nepal the “motherland” though the Nepalese never forgave Morarji Desai for dismissing their claim for inclusion in the Eighth Schedule because it was a foreign language.

Mr Subash Ghising, whose Gorkha National Liberation Front the GJM supplanted, was more honest about his people’s dilemma. The Gorkhaland of his dreams would, he felt, “solve the ‘identity problem’ of the nine million Gorkhas in the country”. Today, that “identity problem” prompts some unnecessarily vociferous posturing. Two points in particular are stressed on the basis of folk memory but in defiance of history and ethnography. First, that the Nepalese have always lived in Darjeeling. Second, though this is implied rather than explicitly stated, that no other community can claim that right.

The first point is easily disposed of. Darjeeling was part of the kingdom of Sikkim until around 1780 when Nepalese troops invaded and conquered much of the territory. Nepal might have annexed Darjeeling if the Chogyal of Sikkim had not appealed to the East India Company which invaded Nepal and forced the cession of a large chunk of territory under the Treaty of Sugauli signed in 1815. Darjeeling was restored to Sikkim and remained Sikkimese until 1835 when a mix of force and trickery persuaded the Chogyal to lease it to the East India Company for a sanatorium for British officers.

Sikkim never relinquished its title to the territory (for which the Company and then New Delhi paid an annual rent) and in 1947 submitted a 10-page memorandum drawn up by a Bengali jurist, Sardar DK Sen, to independent India’s new Government. It argued that Britain’s withdrawal automatically nullified the transfer and restored the status quo ante. It’s a different matter that the last thing today’s Sikkimese want is to be swamped by the Darjeeling Nepalese.

On the second point, Mr Dipak De, a member of Amnesty International, has sent out a number of petitions, arguing that Darjeeling being a Buddhist name and site, its transformation into Gorkhaland violates Articles 18(1) and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which guarantee “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and the rights of “ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities”. He makes the valid point that other communities are also stake-holders in Darjeeling. The Lepchas were the original inhabitants; then came the Bhutiyas. Some hold that even the Magar, Tamang, Rai, Limbu, Tsong and Sherpa peoples are not Nepalese. Protests by the Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association, the Adivasi Vikash Parishad and other groups covered by the Integrated Tribal Development Programme support Mr De’s charge that even Darjeeling’s three hill sub-divisions are not demographically monolithic.

It seems that way because political instability and economic insecurity drove the Nepalese out of their country for generations to fan out across the Terai and Dooars and occupy large tracts of Sikkim and Bhutan, resulting in upheavals of one kind or another in both places. This migration gained additional impetus under official auspices after the British acquired Darjeeling. They imported the Nepalese to blast mountains, lay roads, build houses, plant tea and because “these hereditary enemies of Tibet” were the best guarantee of British Indian security, wrote the ethnographer and civil servant, HH Risley. “Hinduism will assuredly cast out Buddhism, and the praying-wheel of the lama will give place to the sacrificial implements of the Brahman. The land will follow the creed.”

Mr Ghising hoped to give a sense of rootedness to Nepalese immigrants whether strung out along the Terai, working in Mumbai and Chennai or wearing the uniform of India’s seven Gurkha regiments. He promised an equivalent of Israel’s Law of Return, ie, the right to a homeland in Darjeeling even to those who had never set foot in the place.

Mindful of the Nepalese contribution to the country, especially to its military, and given the votes at stake, Indian politicians shied away from taking a stand. The delay until 1992 in including Nepalese in the Constitution’s Eighth Schedule exposed their ambivalence. Though Jyoti Basu dismissed the GNLF as “divisive, anti-people, anti-national and anti-state”, he could hardly forget that the undivided CPI sent a memorandum to the Constituent Assembly asking that “the three contiguous areas of Darjeeling district, southern Sikkim and Nepal be formed into one single zone to be called ‘Gorkhastan’.”

Carefully choosing its words, the BJP, whose Mr Jaswant Singh still represents Darjeeling in the Lok Sabha, promised to “sympathetically examine and appropriately consider the long pending demands of the Gorkhas, the Adivasis and other people of Darjeeling district and Dooars region”. The Congress lurches from one ad hoc position to another, and Trinamool Congress appears to be doing the same.

They have forgotten Rajiv Gandhi’s warning on the eve of another acclaimed agreement, “Don’t the leaders of the CPI(M) know that regional autonomy is the stepping stone to another State?” He did not need to add that all the areas of the old Assam State identified for autonomy under the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule are separate States.

Mr Gurung may be justified in believing that that is also Darjeeling’s future. But one wonders whether in their eagerness to claim a major triumph for Trinamool in its first few weeks in office, either Ms Banerjee or Mr Palaniappan Chidambaram thought things through before the deed was done. Or is it precisely because they are so acutely aware of the logical consequences of their action that the principals did not commit themselves by putting pen to paper? Curiously, the signatories were junior non-political representatives.

FROM THE PIONEER

BY SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY