The fortunes of the Trinamool Congress are not looking good in the hills of Darjeeling. After losing both the Lok Sabha seat as well as the Assembly bypoll from Darjeeling, the TMC may now also lose the Darjeeling municipality.
18 Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) councillors of the total 32 councillors in the Darjeeling municipality have signed a no-confidence motion stating that they are defecting from the Tamang faction of the party to the Gurung faction.
The GJM saw a split in 2017 after Darjeeling saw massive violence over the Gorkhaland issue. The Binay Tamang faction of the GJM is friendly with the Trinamool Congress while the Bimal Gurung faction has joined hands with arch enemies GNLF to back the BJP in the region.
The Trinamool Congress, in alliance with the Binay Tamang faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, are now a minority in the municipality.
31 of the councillors in the municipality are from the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and one is from the TMC.
A little after the no-confidence motion was presented, the West Bengal Police arrested BP Bajgain, a GJM leader from the Bimal Gurung faction. This led to GJM workers surrounding the police car and staging protests across the hill town.
However, the police has not stated any reason for Bajgai’s arrest.
After the 2017 violence which saw Darjeeling burning for days and also led to the death of one police officer, GJM leaders Bimal Gurung and Roshan Giri have been absconding from the hills. The West Bengal police has since issued a look-out notice for both.
At the same time GJM leaders Binay Tamang and Aneet Thapa split from Gurung and joined hands with the Mamata Banerjee government to head the Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA).
After its Lok Sabha and Assembly wins, the Gurung-GNLF-BJP trifecta has sought the dissolution of the GTA board claiming that Thapa and Tamang’s nomination to the board was “unconstitutional”.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)