Siliguri (TIP): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) will contest the upcoming West Bengal assembly polls in alliance, the two parties announced on Thursday, Dec 17, a development that may impact the electoral dynamics in the Darjeeling hills of north Bengal.
The BJP, which has won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat since 2009, was looking for a new ally after Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morhca (GJM) switched his allegiance to chief minister Mamata Banerjee in October. The GNLF was a dominant force in the region since the 1980s because of its leadership in the movement demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland but lost most of its steam in recent years due to the rise of the GJM.
“We were allies of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and our electoral partnership will continue,” Ajoy Edwards, GNLF’s Darjeeling branch president, told HT. The BJP confirmed the development. “We will contest the coming polls with GNLF as our ally,” Sayantan Basu, Bengal BJP general secretary, said. There are six assembly seats in the Darjeeling hills, of which the Trinamool Congress holds one and the BJP holds none.         Source: HT