Congress on the roll in hills- Sensing the vacuum by the loss of credibility of BJP, Congress has moved into recover the lost ground in the hills

It is difficult for a national party to win a seat in the hills– be it Lok Sabha or Assembly ---without the support of regional parties. 

EOI, Editorial, 27 November 2023 : After a gap of a decade and a half, Congress is on the upswing again in Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Benoy Tamang’s joining the Congress will certainly be a shot in the arm for the grand old party of India in the hills. 

Formerly a senior leader of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and a former chairman of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, he is also soft-spoken and level-headed. When the Gorkhaland agitation of 2017 brought the hills to a standstill, it went largely to the credit of Benoy Tamang of arriving at an understanding with the West Bengal government and bringing back a semblance of normality. 

That did not mean, however, that Benoy Tamang had ignored the aspirations of the hill people of a separate state of Gorkhaland. Rather, he had continued to pursue it in his own way; trying to build an all-India consensus on the issue. His refusal to abandon the Gorkhaland demand may have led to his ultimate parting of ways with the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

There are many impediments in the way of formation of a Gorkhaland state, as the BJP government at the Centre has by now discovered. The Gorkhaland promise helped BJP win the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat for two consecutive terms, in 2009 and 2014. In 2019, the promise for the enigmatic permanent political solution for the hills did the trick. Another Lok Sabha election is round the corner, with neither Gorkhaland nor PPS visible anywhere in the horizon. It is not without any reason that the BJP has lost credibility in the minds of the people of the hills. 

Indeed, in the last 14 years of rule of the Narendra Modi government in Delhi, the hills have got nothing so far politically. The previous Congress governments at the Centre did not offer Gorkhaland to the hills either. But during the previous Congress regimes, some of the less stridend demands of the hills had been met; for instance recognition of Nepali language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution; though here the initiative had come from Sikkim Chief Minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari. 

The Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Accord was signed when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Accord was signed when Manmohan Singh was in office in Delhi. Congress Chief Minister of West Bengal Siddhartha Shankar Ray had enjoyed a rapport with the hills. Jawaharlal Nehru had travelled via Kalimpong and Sikkim to Bhutan on horseback along with daughter Indira.

Among all the BJP leaders at the national level, only present M.P. Raju Bista has been active in the hills. Now sensing the vacuum in the hills created by the loss of credibility of BJP, Congress has moved into recover the lost ground. It is too early, however, to predict anything about the Lok Sabha election results now. The most important question is, what will be the stand of the respective regional parties; like the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, Gorkha National Liberation Front which still enjoy considerable mass support, and the newly formed Hamro Party. 

It is difficult for a national party to win a seat in the hills– be it Lok Sabha or Assembly ---without the support of regional parties. Benoy Tamang should be the natural choice for Congress as the candidate for the Darjeeling seat; but he will have to ward off challenges from aspiring leaders from the plains of Siliguri and the Congress High Command will also have to take them on board if the Congress has to wrest the Darjeeling seat from the BJP.