Political climate in Darjeeling hills heating up in the civic polls season

SILIGURI: With major civic body elections knocking the door, rival political forces have started getting into political power play in Bengal’s Darjeeling hills that is remaining under strong separate statehood demand since long. This has pushed the ground-level real problems back in the priority list.
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on her visit to the hill station, has launched three separate development boards for Khas, Gurung and Pahari communities to follow over ten similar ethnic community-based development boards formed earlier. “These boards will contribute to overall development of hills,” said the CM.

Opposing that, Gorkha Janamukti Morcha(GJM), the largest political force in hills, considered the move in different way. “The CM is trying to break hill people’s unity by dividing them with these boards. But these are insignificant,” said GJM General Secretary Roshan Giri.

TMC, the ruling party in Bengal without much of its presence in hills, is now adamant to grab administrative power. On the other side, GJM, the de-facto term dictator in hills, is desperate to save its own existence. Beside Panchayat elections, all the four hill municipalities and autonomous body Gorkhaland Territorial Administration(GTA) are likely to have elections within a year. “This TMC-GJM cold war may erupt out as a major tussle before the elections,” apprehended political observers.

GTA was the outcome of GJM’s separate statehood demand for Darjeeling in the name of Gorkhaland and active persuasion of it’s then close friend TMC with center in 2011. Though Mamata Banerjee never officially accepted Gorkhaland demand, she formed the separate civic administrative body, with the word ‘Gorkhaland’ in it as GJM wanted. Subsequently, GJM started ruling GTA following its avalanche victory in an election process. But, TMC-GJM could not remain friends for long and started fighting each others on different issues.

As the latest episode of this fight, present power play have also put many major issues back in the priority list.

Despite many upgradations, water infrastructure created in hills long back can hardly suffice the need of highly growing populace. As usual, during next pre-monsoon tourism season, the shortage will increases manifold.

Sanitation and garbage management of Darjeeling also demands immediate attention. Road and rail connectivity is another crisis area.

But most importantly, any major turmoil like bandh or scuffle between political rivals will again initiate social unrest hampering tourism dependent economy there.