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Bengal BJP boss rebuts Mamata on ‘Gorkhaland’, his MLA calls it unacceptable
BJP legislator BP Bajgain sent an angry letter to Bengal unit chief Sukanta Majumdar over his statement on Gorkhaland, saying “the syllogistic meaning of this statement leads us to think that the BJP was never a pro-Gorkhaland party, either then and now”.
SILIGURI: Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Sukanta Majumdar’s rebuttal to chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s veiled criticism of his party over Gorkhaland provoked some pushback in the Darjeeling hill region. Among those who countered Majumdar was his party legislator BP Bajgain who sent him an angry letter on Thursday and released it to the public to make his stand known.
Bajgain aka Bishnu Prasad Sharma was upset about Sukanta Majumdar’s statement on Wednesday that the BJP “has never officially uttered the word Gorkhaland”.
“It is chief minister Mamata Banerjee who officially acknowledged and included the word by signing the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) accord,” Majumdar said during his visit to north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri on Wednesday, just about 100km from Darjeeling town that has been at the centre of demands for Gorkhaland for decades.
Majumdar’s statement was designed to counter chief minister Banerjee who promised a permanent solution for the Darjeeling hills during her visit on Tuesday, underlining that there were “some political parties” which came to town ahead of elections and promised statehood. “Their actual motto is to divide the people of the hills,” she said, a remark seen to be aimed at the BJP.
In his letter to the Bengal BJP chief, his party legislator said he could not accept Wednesday’s statement.
“Thousands of my supporters have been disheartened by your statement. I, being a Gorkha myself, cannot accept it,” the BJP lawmaker from the Kurseong hill assembly seat said in his letter.
“The syllogistic meaning of this statement leads us to think that the BJP was never a pro-Gorkhaland party, either then and now,” Bajgain said, underlining that he and Raju Bista, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Darjeeling, won the elections in 2021 and 2019, respectively by promising before their constituents that their long-standing demand for Gorkhaland would be met.
Bajgain’s letter, however, did not specify what he meant by Gorkhaland, a demand for which the Darjeeling hills have witnessed several violent agitations and numerous deaths since the 1980s and is often seen to reflect the demand for a separate state.
To be sure, the BJP has never said it will form a separate state. In its 2019 manifesto, the party only promised to find “a permanent political solution”. But its leaders, as Bajgain indicated, have gone a step further during elections. BJP’s Lok Sabha member John Barla raised the demand for the formation of a separate state or Union Territory comprising districts in north Bengal in June this year. But his party promptly and explicitly distanced itself.
Asked about the BJP legislator’s condemning his statement, Sukanta Majumdar said he appeared to have been “misinformed”.
“I think he has been misinformed. I uttered those words in response to a question and against the statement made by Mamata Banerjee. She said we are separatists and we want to split the hills from the rest of Bengal. She is putting the blame on us when she herself agreed to use the word Gorkhaland when the tripartite GTA Agreement was signed in July 2012,” the Bengal BJP chief said.
During her Tuesday trip to Darjeeling, chief minister Mamata Banerjee also sought proposals from the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha, parties that are allies of the Trinamool Congress. Both parties accuse the BJP-led Centre of misleading the Gorkhas during elections.
On the other hand, pro-BJP parties, such as the Gorkha National Liberation Front and Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists, which attended the tripartite meeting convened by Union home minister Amit Shah in Delhi on October 12, have expressed their faith in the BJP and the Centre.
Majumdar said, “The BJP’s stand is loud and clear. We will provide a permanent political solution that will safeguard the interest of Gorkhas and benefit the state at the same time.”
