In Darjeeling, a fading ‘We Want Gorkhaland’ graffiti now shares wall space with signboards for roads, tourism and welfare schemes - a telling image of
how the hills’ politics is shifting from the dream of statehood to the demands of everyday governance.
For decades, politics in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong in north Bengal revolved around one emotionally charged promise: a separate Gorkhaland state. That aspiration remains alive, but it is no longer the only language of politics in the hills.
Ahead of the West Bengal polls, the hills are witnessing a deeper shift. The old cry for political recognition is now sharing space with another powerful set of demands: who will repair roads, revive tourism, ensure drinking water, improve schools and hospitals, raise tea garden wages and keep welfare money flowing.
The result is the most layered contest the hills have seen in years - a clash between the dream of Gorkhaland and the politics of delivery.
At one level, the election is a confrontation between the ruling TMC-Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM) combine and the BJP-led NDA.
The Anit Thapa-led BGPM, backed by the TMC, is seeking to persuade voters that the era of endless agitation has exhausted itself and that the hills now need development.
The BJP, by contrast, is again trying to revive the emotional pull of a “permanent political solution”, arguing that roads, welfare and tourism projects cannot substitute the unresolved question of Gorkha identity.
“Earlier, people voted for a Gorkhaland dream. Now they also want to know who will repair the road to their village,” said a tea garden worker in Kurseong.
From the violent Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) agitation in the 1980s to the rise of Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), hills' politics has long been powered by the unfinished promise of statehood.
The BJP entered that landscape after 2009, forging an enduring but transactional alliance with hill parties. In election after election, it retained the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat with the support of the GJM and later the GNLF, while promising a “permanent political solution”.
But repeated promises without delivery have created fatigue.
The voter-list revision exercise has added another layer to that fatigue.
In the Darjeeling district, the SIR led to the deletion of around 1.22 lakh names across the five assembly segments, including nearly 25,000 in Darjeeling, 18,394 in Kurseong and around 17,000 in Kalimpong.
The numbers are politically significant because they are close to, or larger than, the BJP’s winning margins in 2021 - around 21,000 votes in Darjeeling and 15,000 in Kurseong, while Kalimpong was won by the TMC-backed Binay Tamang faction by 4,000 votes.
That has injected a new uncertainty into the hills’ electoral arithmetic, with the TMC-BGPM combine trying to turn the SIR into proof that the BJP has allegedly failed" to protect even the political identity of the Gorkhas
The 2017 agitation, which paralysed the hills for more than 100 days, left deep economic scars. Tourism collapsed, schools shut, and tea gardens suffered. What followed was not the disappearance of the Gorkhaland sentiment, but its fragmentation.
Bimal Gurung lost some of his aura. Binay Tamang faded. The GNLF declined sharply. Into that vacuum, Anit Thapa's BGPM stepped in, projecting itself as a post-agitation force willing to work with the state government rather than remain trapped in a cycle of protest.
“Our politics is about development with dignity. People want roads, water, schools and jobs. Agitation alone cannot feed families,” Thapa said.
The TMC has woven itself carefully into that strategy. Unlike earlier elections, when the TMC was viewed as essentially a “plains” party with little resonance among Gorkha voters, it is now trying to leverage both its alliance with the BGPM and the widening reach of its welfare schemes.
'Lakshmir Bhandar' and other schemes have acquired unusual significance because of a subtle demographic shift. Women now outnumber men in several parts of the Darjeeling district. There are more than 5.7 lakh women voters, while nearly 5 lakh women in the hills are beneficiaries of the scheme.
That arithmetic has encouraged the TMC to believe Mamata Banerjee’s “Banglar Meye” image can carry political value even in a region where Bengali identity historically has had little resonance.
Yet the BJP believes the TMC-BGPM combine is underestimating the depth of the Gorkhaland sentiment. That explains why the party has once again turned to old allies, old symbols and old promises.
The Bimal Gurung-led GJM faction announced unconditional support to BJP candidates in all seven assembly constituencies in Darjeeling district and said only the BJP could deliver a permanent political solution.
The BJP’s message is equally simple: development without identity is incomplete.
Its candidate choices reflect that calculation. In Darjeeling, it has fielded Noman Rai, identified with the GJM; in Kalimpong, former India hockey captain Bharat Chhetri; and in Kurseong, local BJP leader Sonam Lama. The BJP is increasingly dependent on the residual appeal of Bimal Gurung’s GJM and on tactical understandings with other anti-TMC forces. That is where Ajoy Edwards and the Indian Gorkha Janshakti Front (IGJF) enter the picture.
Unlike the BGPM, the IGJF has returned to the original Gorkhaland demand.
For the first time in decades, the hills are not merely voting on the dream of Gorkhaland, but on who can govern - a contest between the politics of a dream and the politics of delivery.
