Darjeeling district has witnessed several agitations for Gorkhaland since the 1990s. The latest unrest took place in the hills in 2017 when it witnessed a 104-day strike coupled with violent clashes.
The new entrant in Darjeeling politics, Hamro Party, has made the campaign against corruption its theme song in the June 26 Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA) elections, even as other issues, including the long-standing demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland, are also being raised by various parties in the poll fray.
The 47-year-old Hamro Party founder and restauranteur, Ajoy Edwards, has pledged in his campaign for the GTA elections, which are taking place after a gap of 10 years, that his party will break the well-entrenched politician-contractor nexus in the hills, which has, he has charged, plagued the functioning of the GTA.
Edwards has claimed that the GTA has contractors’ pending dues worth Rs 370 crore, which will be cleared, he said, only after conducting a “social audit” of various projects if the Hamro Party is voted to power in the GTA polls.
Less than three months after it was founded by Edwards, the Hamro Party, which means ‘Our Party’ in Nepali, made a stunning debut in the Darjeeling Municipality elections, held on February 27 this year, winning 18 of the total 32 wards. The fledgling party, without resorting to a pitch for Gorkhaland, elbowed out the north Bengal hills’ established political players, such as the Trinamool Congress(TMC)-backed Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) and the BJP-backed Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), thereby stopping the ruling TMC’s juggernaut in the hilly district of West Bengal.
Buoyed by the civic poll results, the Hamro Party — which is yet to be recognised by the Election Commission and has just a name and a flag with “khukri” symbol — has now set its eyes on becoming an established political force in the hills, long dominated by the GJM and the GNLF.
The Hamro Party has sought to make the issue of probity and transparency its calling card in the Darjeeling hill politics. The party-led Darjeeling municipality recently released the finance report of the civic body’s general fund for May 2022, stating that it had collected around Rs 86 lakh in the month and with about Rs 91 lakh expenditure, it had nearly Rs 80 lakh as closing balance.
A Hamro Party supporter recently made public an RTI report stating that the GTA had not given utilisation certificates worth Rs 135 crore so far.
Like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), especially when it first took the plunge into the Delhi Assembly polls in 2013, the Humro Party is now all set to make its debut in the GTA polls on the anti-corruption plank. The GJM and GNLF have boycotted the polls, although the TMC and Congress are contesting it, among other parties.
In his campaign for the GTA elections, Edwards has maintained that “Many senior leaders in the hills are surrounded by a group of four-five major contractors
who bag almost 60 per cent of all work, while the remaining contractors barely get any work. We are against these privileged groups and want to break their nexus.” He has also said that “If we are voted to power in the GTA, we will clear those contractors’ dues who have done their works properly. Otherwise, we won’t clear their bills”.
Darjeeling district has witnessed several agitations for Gorkhaland since the 1990s. The latest unrest took place in the hills in 2017 when it witnessed a 104-day strike coupled with violent clashes.
The GTA was formed as the result of a tripartite agreement between the Centre, West Bengal government and GJM on July 18, 2011. Seen as the answer to a long-drawn demand by Gorkhas for self-rule in Darjeeling, the body’s mandate was to usher in development for Bengal’s hill areas. The last GTA election was held in July 2012, in which the GJM won all 45 seats.
Source:indianexpress.com