This year round, Raju Bista may find it difficult to maintain the record victory margin of 2019

SANDIP C JAIN, EOI, 18 April 2024 :  Due to some reason or the other, my travel has been restricted since the past few weeks. I haven’t ventured out of the hills ever since the parliamentary elections were declared. I am unaware of the election scene other than what is happening in the Darjeeling region. What is taking me by surprise is the total lack of enthusiasm and fervor that parliamentary elections generally generate in the hills.

Elections are said to be the biggest festival in the celebration of democracy. Forget festivity or any celebration, what appears this time round, is more a sign of resignation for the inevitable. The gusto with which party supporters went about their campaigns, the zeal with which political netas organized street corner meetings or public rallies, the high pitched dramas that used to take place and the door-to-door campaigns (read empty promises) that the Netas made, all appear totally missing as of now.
The fact is that now hardly a week remains before the campaign ends. Whether this is an acceptance of the inescapable fate that awaits the hills, or whether the voters are fed up with the untruths and deceit that are shoved down their throats before every elections or whether the people are just not interested in the election drama, is something I really cannot pinpoint but the fact is that these elections do not really feel like the festival of democracy that we generally are used to. Of course the John Travolota dance of comical proportions by a certain neta, the divorce of another from the political party he was elected from, the yo-yo like fluctuation of loyalty of a former undeclared king of the hills, the indecisiveness of the world largest party in declaring its candidate for the Darjeeling parliamentary seat, the emergence of independent candidates like the firebrand Bandana Rai and the alliance between the Congress and the CPI (M) do provide a script for a potboiler film in the making. 

What remains to be seen is whether this lack of interest in the campaign period is a sign of change or a sign of helplessness. What political observers feel is that it will not be as easy for Raju Bista to retain his seat with the same mammoth margin which he achieved in2019. Bista had a winning margin of more than 413,000 votes in2019. This was almost 60 percent of the total votes cast, which was no doubt spectacular by any standards But then politics and circumstances were different in2019. The Modi wave was at it speak then, the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha which rules the Gorkha Territorial Administration presently, was not established at the grassroot level. The CPI (M) and the Congress were contesting separately while this time they have a candidate who is much more acceptable and charismatic. The Bandana Rai and B P Bajgai factors were not present in 2019. The candidate of  Trinamool Congress - BGPM this time around appears stronger and better connected in the Terai region of the Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency. Besides, the silence of the BJP on its previous poll manifesto on the issue of Gorkhaland is deafening indeed. And of course there is the general anti-incumbency factor against the ruling BJP government, the bulging unemployment and soaring inflation will also be a factor this time around.

To make any assessment of the election results would not only be overambitious of me and also against the strict guidelines of the Election Commission. Butof course I can make an analysis using the 2019 results as a guideline. Bista polled close to7,50,000 votes in 2019while Amar Rai, the joint candidate of Trinamool Congress, Binoy Tamang and Anit Thapa, polled less than half that number. There are seven assembly constituencies in the Darjeeling seat out of which four, Siliguri, Matigara, Phansidewa an dChopra, are in the plains and three, Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong, are in the hills. Approximately 60 percent votes are in the plains while the remaining 40 percent in the hills.

In the elections prior to 2019,it had been observed that voters in the hills generally voted enbloc for a certain candidate while the votes in the plains were generally divided between the various contesting candidates. This resulted inevitably in the victory of the candidate that the hills were supporting. The situation is different now. I attribute this to the lack of a charismatic and strong leader in the hills to whose call everyone will respond. On the flip side, BJP has emerged as a party with a base both in the hills and the plains segment of the Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency.

What was interesting to note in 2019 was that Bista secured more votes than Rai both in the 

hills as well as in the plains. In fact after the emergence of GNLF in the late 1980s this was the first time that the votes in the hills were fragmented. While the hill votes are fragmented, on the contrary the plains have started to vote enbloc. 

In the 2019 elections Bista secured more votes in six of the seven assembly segments of the Darjeeling Lok Sabha Constituency and only in the Chopra Assembly segment did the Trinamool Congress candidate poll more votes. 

If a comparative analysis of the voting pattern of the plains and the hills is to be made, in the plains Bista secured about 405,000 votes while Amar Rai secured about 236,500 votes while in the hills the former secured about 344,100 votes while the latter managed just103,500 votes. My reading is that in the coming elections Bista will lose some votes in the hills as well as in the plains; though in the plains his loss will be less. Readers can do their own arithmetic.(The writer of this article is the Editor of HimalayanTimes, Kalimpong)