Hill leaders in Calcutta and Delhi for talks – Telegraph India

Anit Thapa, the chairman of the board of administrators at the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, was in Calcutta, while leaders of four different hill parties were in Delhi on Wednesday to meet BJP leaders.

It is safe to assume that no local political leader worth his salt is in the Darjeeling hills now.

This is a clear indication that regional politics is being shaped by state and central politics, said an observer.

Anit Thapa of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s Binay Tamang camp is in Calcutta for an “administrative meeting” when all current discussion in Darjeeling is politics.

The Tamang camp has been with the Trinamul Congress since 2017.

Tamang’s bete noire Bimal Gurung who was earlier aligned with the BJP now backs Trinamul.

As of today, factually, Binay Tamang and Bimal Gurung are with Trinamul.

When Trinamul Lok Sabha candidate Amar Singh Rai lost the election in Darjeeling a year ago, the Gurung camp was with the BJP. BJP candidate Raju Bista had won the election.

On Wednesday, the Tamang camp said Thapa was in Calcutta for an important meeting for administrative reasons.

Neeraj Zimba, the GNLF leader who won Darjeeling Assembly byelection on the BJP ticket by defeating Binay Tamang a year ago, told The Telegraph from Delhi: “We will be meeting the Union home minister, Amit Shah, tomorrow (Thursday).”

According to Zimba, R.B. Rai, the president of the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists (CPRM), Akhil Bhartiya Gorkha League (ABGL) chief Pratap Khati and some other hill-based political leaders would also meet Shah.

Apolitical organisations, which, too, had supported Raju Bista, however, have not yet been invited, as informed by Zimba.

Observers believe hill politics is in a state of flux.

“The political situation in the hills seems to be aligned between two power centres, Trinamul and the BJP, but the common feeling in the hills is that nothing has been politically concretised,” said an political observer. 

“Three months later, when the code of conduct will be in place during the Assembly elections, hill politics would be crystallised.”