Hills campaign peaks on final day

Deep Gazmer & Jaideep Mazumdar,TNN | Apr 16, 2014: SILIGURI/DARJEELING: The poll campaign for the contentious Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat peaked before drawing to a close on Tuesday evening with all the three primary candidates making their last-ditch appeals to the 14.15 lakh-odd voters here. 

While Trinamool Congress brought in screen idol Dev to shore up the prospects of its candidate Baichung Bhutia, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) chief Bimal Gurung and his nominee, the BJP's S S Ahluwalia, pitted for the votes of the tribals and minorities who are perceived to be disinclined towards the BJP. Independent candidate Mahendra P Lama undertook a padayatra from Sonada, about 23km from Darjeeling, to Kurseong that lies midway between Siliguri and Darjeeling, and evoked an encouraging response from people along NH-55 that he took. 

The campaigns in the plains and the Hills presented a study in contrast. In the sultry plains of Siliguri, Dev's roadshow evoked the expected frenzy, even though Baichung chose to stay away from it. Darjeeling, in contrast, was quite nippy with intermittent showers failing to dampen the enthusiasm of more than 10,000 people from the town and its periphery congregating at the Motor Stand where Gurung and Ahluwalia addressed them. 

Gurung, perhaps in a bid to bring back those who had strayed away due to the GJM's 44-day shutdown in August-September last year, vowed that he would never ever call a strike or "anything resembling a shutdown". He also appealed to the Lepchas, Tibetans, Limboos, Tamangs and religious minorities like Muslims and Christians to support GJM and 'Gorkhaland'. 

Ahluwalia tried to dispel "misgivings" of the tribals and minorities towards the BJP and pointed out that as a Sikh, he too belonged to a minority community. Battling the 'outsider' tag and Jaswant Singh's failure to represent Darjeeling effectively in the last Lok Sabha, Ahluwalia said that even before he filed his nomination, he took a house in Darjeeling on a long lease and intended to be a resident of this hill station. 

This is the first time, North Bengal Development Department minister Gautam Deb told TOI, that "a candidate put up by the party reigning in the Hills is facing a tough contest from the one put up by a party that dominates the plains". Mahendra P Lama told TOI that this is the first time that Darjeeling will witness a "vibrant and participatory election". "This is the first time an independent candidate could cause a prime ministerial aspirant to fly down to this constituency, or the state's chief minister to campaign here thrice," he said. 

Everyone agrees that this contest will be a close one, quite unlike the landslide victories that Darjeeling has witnessed in the past. Jaswant Singh, propped by GJM in 2009, decimated his CPM rival Jibesh Sarkar by a massive 2.53 lakh votes. The margin, says Deb, will be much lower this time. That's not only because the Trinamool has put up Baichung, who is popular both in the Hills and the plains, to face off Ahluwalia, but prominent educationist and former vice-chancellor of Sikkim Central University Mahendra P Lama, a son of the soil unlike the other two, has queered the pitch for both. 

The GJM no longer commands the absolute loyalty of the hill people and the Gorkhas in the plains as it used to even till a year ago. The Trinamool has made inroads in the Hills. The tribals and religious minorities among the hill populace have got alienated from GJM. Lama, seen as a clean and reputable person (he is a senior faculty of JNU), will garner a sizeable section of the educated middle and upper middle class voters as well as a section of the youth. And also that of tea garden workers owing allegiance to the CPRM which has pledged support to him. 

In the plains, while Baichung will do well in the Muslim-majority Chopra Assembly segment as well as the Bengali-dominated Matigara-Naxalbari, Siliguri and Phansidewa assembly constituencies, Ahluwalia can look forward to bagging a large segment of the votes of the 80,000-strong Hindi-speaking community. But Bhaichung will not have a free run in all Bengali-dominated areas; a sizeable section of voters of East Bengal origins support the BJP. Also, many among the rest of the Bengali Hindu populace have got disenchanted with the Trinamool and could vote for the BJP. The CPM will also divide the Trinamool's votes in the plains. 

What has been a shot in the arm for Baichung in the Hills is the endorsement he received from the GNLF which had polled about 42,000 votes in the three Hills assembly constituencies of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong in 2011. The GNLF's support base had declined since then, but many are returning to its fold. Though, again, not all of them will vote for Baichung since they're not comfortable with the Trinamool that is dead against 'Gorkhaland'. All this make the electoral equations here very complex.