“In Rajasthani, there’s a saying, if you do not wish to go to a village, do not ask the way to it. The BJP believes in smaller states. I believe in the issue of Gorkhaland. I want to go down the path. And I will see how best to approach the village, the path,” says BJP’s candidate for Darjeeling Jaswant Singh.

It’s more than music to the ears of Bimal Gurung of the radical Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), who seized the reins of the movement for a separate state — including the entire Darjeeling district and parts of Jalpaiguri —from veteran Subhash Ghising and is now rooting for Jaswant Singh.

The GJM’s agitation for a separate state paralysed this region last summer, cut if off from the rest of the country for almost a month. It issued a diktat to introduce “GL” in vehicle licence plates for Gorkhaland, forced shopkeepers to pull down signboards that said West Bengal and even asked residents to stop paying taxes.

During the agitation, both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Cabinet colleague Pranab Mukherjee backed state Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in his opposition against the GJM. But by roping in Jaswant Singh and the BJP, Gurung has successfully placed the Gorkhaland issue on the national radar.

The BJP had then preferred to remain silent but Singh’s open espousal of a separate state has, ironically, rattled even the state unit of his party.

Not only the Congress and the CPM are united in their opposition to Gorkhaland — the sitting MP is Congress’s Dawa Narbula who is also a candidate this time — even the state BJP leadership is wary. Senior state BJP leaders including Tapan Sikdar, Rahul Sinha and Col. Sabyasachi Bagchi have opposed the GJM.

... contd.