During the Sikkim Legislative Assembly elections of 2014, the then Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling had used “Sikkim lai Gorkhaland banauncha” narrative to scare people of Sikkim to vote against SKM. That was the first time I had realized how politicians in Sikkim use “Darjeeling merger” as a tool to fear-monger people into voting for them. In almost every election after that, this narrative is raked up in Sikkim by one group of politicians or another, to serve their nefarious political purposes.

The “merger” claim also deserves a plain reply. What I find hilarious is that some in Sikkim suffer from this “Central Character Syndrome” and have taken “with contiguous areas of neighbouring states” to mean Sikkim. That’s absolutely not the case. As far as I know, securing the Chicken’s Neck by incorporating Kishanganj district of Bihar into a possible North Bengal state has been an idea national security experts have proposed many times. We don’t see people in Bihar protesting, nor people in Assam with which also West Bengal shares a border. Why is it that every time, a solution to Darjeeling is proposed, a certain section of politicians in Sikkim feels insecure? it’s because this narrative serves their political purpose and nothing else.