The Terai is not a foreign appendage attached to the hills; it is part of the same human geography. Phansidewa and Bagdogra have substantial Nepali-speaking populations whose families have lived there for  generations, and the tea-garden workforce of the Terai is overwhelmingly Adivasi and Gorkha. Their political voice in district affairs has always run through hill institutions, hill parties and hill networks. Cutting off these blocks administratively is not a neutral change. It is a demographic rearrangement of political power.