Meet held for consensus candidate

VIVEK CHHETRI, TT, 4 March 2019,  Darjeeling: The National Gorkhaland Committee, an apolitical organisation which is trying to position itself as a "think thank" of the Indian Gorkhas, held an "all-party" meeting here on Sunday to "facilitate" the contest of a consensus candidate for Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat.

The committee members termed the meeting "positive" but recent political developments suggest the task before the committee is Herculean.

"We had invited all regional parties…..Our endeavour is towards Gorkha unity and our aim is to bring about consensus and then decide on a common strategy to finally come up with a consensus candidate," said Lt. Gen. (retd) Shakti Gurung, the president of the committee.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, Trinamul, BJP and the CPM were absent from the meeting, which was attended by parties like GNLF, CPRM, ABGL (Bharati Tamang), Jana Andolan Party, Gorkh Rastriya Congress, Congress and Sikkim-Darjeeling Ekikaran Manch.

Munish Tamang, the general secretary of the committee, said: "Every leader present today has agreed to rise above politics this time. This has been the biggest takeaway from the meeting" Those present at the meeting sounded positive. But in the past few weeks, almost all political constituents who were present at the meeting said they would start an initiative to come up with a consensus candidate.

The GNLF has announced that it too will hold an all party meeting. The JAP and the CPRM have also spoken on similar lines.

"It needs to be seen whether the NGC can put a stop on this rat race of trying to take the credit for initiating the process to come up with a consensus candidate by hill parties," said an observer.

Another big challenge, observers, believe is to get the support of parties like the CPM and the Congress which have supporters mainly in the plains.

"The hill parties will definitely have the Gorkhaland narrative for the elections and it needs to be seen how they can balance this with the plains-centric parties. Without support from the CPM and the Congress or in that sense from the plains, winning the seat solely depended on hill votes," said an observer.

Tamang acknowledged the challenges before the committee.

"This is just the first round of meetings. In subsequent meetings, we hope all these issues will be addressed. At the moment, we have not decided on any candidate but have only decided to rise above politics," said Tamang.