West Bengal Assembly Election 2021: Amid defections and mass exodus, Mamata Banerjee has ultimately got the man behind the Bharatiya Janata Party’s accomplishment in the hilly area — Darjeeling and Kalimpong — of North Bengal beside her. Feeling betrayed by the BJP, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) founder and president Bimal Gurung final year in October announced that he would leave the saffron party to join the Trinamool Congress.
Bimal Gurung is a stalwart supporter of Gorkhaland. His outfit GJM has a substantial presence in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Jalpaiguri — they collectively have 13 assembly seats. The GJM also has minor presence in 3 other districts of North Bengal, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, and North Dinajpur — these 3 districts have 23 assembly constituencies. This quantity is enormous thinking about the sort of close contest is anticipated in between the BJP and the TMC.
In total, North Bengal has 54 assembly seats and they are in Malda, North Dinajpur, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, and South Dinajpur. This area has 8 Lok Sabha seats and in 2019, the BJP had swept this portion by winning seven of eight seats with assistance from Gurung’s GJM. In this election, the saffron party had won 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal.
Now with Gurung joining Mamata may well have critical repercussions for the saffron party which was hoping to repeat its parliamentary overall performance. This time, the TMC has offered 3 assembly seats — Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong — to the GJM. The GJM had won these 3 seats in 2011 and 2016.
The TMC had been attempting to get Gurung’s assistance but the latter backed the BJP pondering it would return the favour by accepting his outfit’s Gorkhaland demand. For this cause, Gurung repeatedly snubbed Mamata’s overtures to get his assistance for TMC candidate Bhaichung Bhutia in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In that election, Gurung backed BJP’s SS Ahluwalia who won by almost 2 lakh votes.
In 2019, Gurung once more supported BJP’s Raju Bista and helped him win from the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat. However, his connection with the saffron party soured just after the BJP quietly told him that it wasn’t in favour of the separate Gorkhaland. Now that Gurung has announced his assistance to the TMC, the BJP will have to play its cards smartly in the hilly area to make additional on what it had accomplished in North Bengal in 2019.
Polling in North Bengal will take spot in Phase-4 on April 10, 5 April 17, 6 on April 22, 7 on April 26 and 8 on April 29. The outcomes will be declared on May 2.