GJM wins managing committee seats of Vidyasagar Higher Secondary School in Bijanbari

Darjeeling: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha tasted its first electoral victory after Binay Tamang took charge with the party winning all six seats on the managing committee of Vidyasagar Higher Secondary School in Bijanbari on Sunday.

The Morcha and Trinamul were in the fray.

Even though the election involved only 213 guardians of the institution, polls to school management committees and college unions do act as an indicator of the prevailing political mood in the region.

When Harka Bahadur Chhetri's Jana Andolan Party was gathering steam in Kalimpong, the party had won 12 of the 22 seats in the students' council of Kalimpong College, while the dominant Morcha had managed only 10 seats. Before the statehood agitation last year, Trinamul had defeated the Morcha by one vote to wrestle the student's union at Bijanbari Degree College.

In the polls to the Vidyasagar school on Sunday, all the six candidates backed by the Morcha got votes ranging from 155 to 157. The six Trinamul-backed candidates polled between 44 and 48 votes.

Sandip Chhetri, the spokesman for the Morcha's Darjeeling subdivision committee, said: "All our candidates have been elected. We would like to express our gratitude to all guardians of the school."

Even though Darjeeling and Kurseong MLAs, along with elected representatives of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong municipalities were with Tamang, the Morcha had not faced any form of election after Tamang took control of the party in November.

Against this backdrop, the elections at this school were keenly followed.

Uday Shankar Rai, headmaster of the school, said: "The committee is formed for a three-year tenure. We did not have to hold the previous elections as the members were elected uncontested."

The school which was established in 1940 had 324 registered voters.

The Telegraph