BJP, GNLF join hands for Bengal polls

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) will contest the upcoming West Bengal assembly polls in alliance, the two parties announced on Thursday, a development that may impact the electoral dynamics in the Darjeeling hills of north Bengal.

 

The BJP, which has won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat since 2009, was looking for a new ally after Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morhca (GJM) switched his allegiance to chief minister Mamata Banerjee in October. The GNLF was a dominant force in the region since the 1980s because of its leadership in the movement demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland but lost most of its steam in recent years due to the rise of the GJM.

“We were allies of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and our electoral partnership will continue,” Ajoy Edwards, GNLF’s Darjeeling branch president, told HT. The BJP confirmed the development. “We will contest the coming polls with GNLF as our ally,” Sayantan Basu, Bengal BJP general secretary, said.

 

There are six assembly seats in the Darjeeling hills, of which the Trinamool Congress holds one and the BJP holds none.

Edwards made the statement hours after leaders of smaller parties in Darjeeling held a meeting with Union minister of state for home G Kishan Reddy in Delhi to discuss the demand for scheduled tribe status for 11 Gorkha communities and a permanent political solution to the Gorkhaland stir.

Apart from GNLF, the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists, the All India Gorkha League and some local outfits took part in the meeting. Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP national general secretary and the party’s election observer for Bengal, and Raju Bista, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Darjeeling, were also present.

“Reddy stated that the process for inclusion of 11 left-out Gorkha sub-tribes is already being undertaken and that the Union home ministry is in communication with the Registrar General of India (RGI) regarding the request to expedite the process.” Bista said in a statement after the meeting. 

 

Gurung, who leads one faction of the GJM and helped the BJP win the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, emerged from hiding in October and offered to help Banerjee win local assembly seats. The other GJM faction offered support to Banerjee immediately after Gurung went underground in September 2017. Though rivals, both factions now support the Trinamool Congress.

 https://www.hindustantimes.com