Irony seems to be the main stay of politics in the Darjeeling Hills.
There was a chance for a potential non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
non-Trinamool Congress (TMC) alliance for the Lok Sabha elections.
However, the two former foes of the Gorkha National Liberation Front
(GNLF) and the Bimal Gurung faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM)
have banded together to support a BJP candidate. The TMC has predictably
backed Amar Singh Rai from the Binay Tamang and Anit Thapa faction of
the GJM. The irony is that the Gurung camp as well as the GNLF could
have positioned themselves to make a principled stand in the elections,
given that the Tamang-Thapa camp of the GJM is perceived to be
controlled by Kolkata. Perhaps, a vain hope for third time lucky is what
has prompted the alliance with the BJP.
On March 11, a meeting was called by the GNLF, which was attended by
the members from the CPM, Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists
(CPRM), Congress, Jan Adolan Party (JAP) and Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha
League (ABGL). The idea was to agree on a consensus candidate who would
contest from the Darjeeling constituency. The CPRM has suggested the
name of Ratna Bahadur Rai who had previously served as a member for
Parliament for the CPM in the short-lived 11th Lok Sabha between May
1996 and December 1997. The final announcement was set to be made on
March 15, however, due to various reasons, the announcement was not
made. Instead, the GNLF held a press conference where party
spokesperson, Neeraj Zimba, reaffirmed that the party will back a
consensus candidate no matter what. Here too, he mentioned the
possibility of Ratna Bahadur Rai’s candidature. However, on March 20,
the Gurung faction of the GJM as well as the Man Ghisingh and Neeraj
Zimba led GNLF announced their decision to back Raju Singh Bisht, the
BJP candidate for the Lok Sabha elections.
BJP in the Darjeeling Hills
The first time the BJP won the Darjeeling seat was in 2009. Jaswant
Singh won the election, thanks to the tireless campaigning of the
undivided GJM-led by Bimal Gurung. However, in 2013, protests broke out
in Darjeeling when Telangana was created, mainly due to the fact that
the demand for a separate state in the Darjeeling hills is older than
India’s independence. A ‘missing person’ complaint was filed in
Darjeeling against Jaswant Singh, as he had been absent from his
constituency for a long time.
In 2014, the GJM once again backed the BJP candidate, SS Ahluwalia.
Perhaps, there was a sense that Gorkhaland did not happen, as there was
no BJP-led Union Government. Hence, the logic in 2014 was that if a BJP
government is formed, then Gorkahaland is extremely likely. What
contributed to this belief was that it was the BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance under Atal Bihari Vajpayee which created
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand in 2000. However, despite the
agitation in 2017, which saw the hills shutdown for 104 days, 13 people
killed and heavy-handed police action, the BJP maintained a silence. The
political parties in the hills initially demanded a meeting with the
Union Government to resolve the matter. However, the union government’s
silence led to capitulation by the hill parties, who eventually held
talks with the state government. This led to the downfall of the BJP’s
star campaigner in the Darjeeling Hills, Bimal Gurung.
The TMC government was quick to lodge a litany of cases against Bimal
Gurung and his aides. This prompted the former strongman to go
underground. Rumour has it that he shuttles between Nepal and Delhi to
avoid detection and arrest. With Gurung out of the way, Anit Thapa and
Binay Tamang were brought in to fill the void. Binay Tamang was
appointed the head of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA),
despite it being an elected post. Perhaps due to the common perception
that the GJM under Binay Tamang is actually a TMC front, the GNLF began
regaining their lost ground in the Hills.
GJM and the GNLF
The GNLF used to be the reigning overlord in the Darjeeling Hills
since the armed uprising in 1986. Bimal Gurung was a former member of
Gorkha Volunteer Corps (GVC) from the days of the GNLF’s armed movement
for Gorkhaland. He later rose in the ranks of the GNLF and represented
the Tukvar constituency in the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), an
autonomous body for administering the Darjeeling Hills. However, his
disenchantment with his former leader, Subhash Ghising, arose when the
latter chose not to hold elections to the DGHC in 2004 until the
creation of a new body under Schedule VI of the Constitution. Until the
body would be created, Ghising would assume a caretaker role.
In 2007, Gurung was expelled from the GNLF for anti-party activities.
The same year, he launched the GJM while accusing Ghising of selling
out the promise of a separate Gorkhaland state. The issue of the Sixth
Schedule status for the hills arose due to the tribal population of the
hills being very small. Of course, in this context, the ‘tribal
population’ would refer to the legally recognised Scheduled Tribe (ST)
status. Though the Union Cabinet had initially accepted the idea of
creating an autonomous body for the Hills under Schedule VI, the GJM’s
agitation resulted in frantic lobbying in Delhi until the matter was
referred to a Parliamentary Committee, which then passed the buck onto
the Ministry of Home Affairs to reassess the ground realities. Thus, the
Sixth Schedule status was defeated. In 2008, Ghising was forced to
resign as caretaker of the DGHC.
In 2011, stability finally returned when the GJM signed a tripartite
agreement with the government of India and the government of West Bengal
to establish the GTA. In real terms, the only difference between the
GTA and the DGHC was the use of the name ‘Gorkhaland’. Ironically, after
Gurung’s ouster, the GTA led by Tamang and Thapa is colloquially
referred to as GTA-2. In other words, only the faces have changed. The
political equations at present seem to be more about political survival
of the Hill parties rather than the Gorkhaland dream.
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