Anatomy of Ambition by Upendra examines how in trying to cling on-to power in a body nobody wants – GTA, Ajoy Edwards is coming across as power-hungry and doing himself a great dis-service.

In May of 2022, when the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) elections were declared, people in Darjeeling region saw it as West Bengal government’s attempt at legitimizing the illegitimate regime they had foisted upon the people. There was a near unanimous agreement that any such election should be boycotted.

The Gorkhaland andolan of 2017, and how it was subverted using “traitors” from among our own people, had left a lot of ill-will against the Trinamool Congress led West Bengal government.

Former Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leaders like Binoy Tamang, Anit Thapa, Sanchabir Subba along with the former Darjeeling MLA Amar Rai, Kurseong MLA Rohit Sharma and a few others took control of GJM in the absence of Bimal Gurung. But they were regard as GJM 2 by the people in general.

From 2017 to 2022, the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal ran the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration using proxies in the form of “Board of Administrators (BoA)”. Binoy Tamang was appointed as the BoA Chairman, with Anit Thapa as the BoA Deputy Chairman. Amar Rai, Sanchabir Subba, Anu Pradhan and J Khatoon were handed responsibilities of various departments on 2nd of Nov, 2017.

The defeat of TMC-GJM2 “Bhumiputra” candidate Amar Rai in the 2019 general elections,brought to fore the rifts in the GJM-2 camp. Further, the defeat of Binoy Tamang in 2019 MLA bye-elections and his unceremonious removal as the head of GJM-2 and GTA Board of Administrators Chairman in April of 2019 helped Anit Thapa consolidate his control over GJM-2.

With Anit finally in complete control, he played smart and gave up on the GJM2 label. He then started a new political outfit the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM) or as they were popularly referred to as “Tantrik-Morcha” on 9th of Sept, 2021.

Once Anit was on a firm footing, TMC government in West Bengal started preparing grounds for conducting GTA elections.

That is when Ajoy Edwards announced the launch of his new political party, all the way from Ladakh. He made good on his words and launched “Hamro Party” on 25th of Nov, 2021.

By December 2024 Kurseong MLA Rohit Sharma and Binoy Tamang were both shown the door by Anit, and they ended up joining TMC on 24th of Dec, 2021.

There was a near unanimous agreement among all all political parties with some history in Darjeeling, that the GTA elections should be boycotted. Other than the newly formed Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM), which for all intent and purpose was viewed as TMC Team-B. Further legitimacy to the farcical GTA election was given by Edward’s Hamro Party, which contested the elections.

In the absence of any credible opposition, as expected BGPM won majority and Hamro Party also won some seats.

From a purely political perspective, had Hamro Party not contested the 2022 GTA elections, it would have automatically de-legitimized the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, and perhaps compelled the TMC government to negotiate actual autonomy with the hill people. With Edwards and his merry men contesting the elections, they provided credibility to the GTA elections, that was majorly rigged by Kolkata.

Now in 2026, Anit Thapa has resigned as GTA Chairman, along with some of his party Sabhasads. What is interesting to note is that neither Edwards or any of Hamro Party (which incidentally does not exist today) sabhasads have bothered to resign from the GTA Sabha. There is a very good chance that Edwards may end up becoming the GTA Chairman, thus fulfilling his long-held ambition of running the GTA (else why bother contesting an election everyone else had boycotted?).

Despite IGJF’s holier-than-though claims of them wanting to retain GTA Sabha to check on GTA corruption, the fact of the matter is that increased GTA budget allows whoever controls GTA to be in control of the political future of Darjeeling region.

All claims to contrary, there are strong indications that Edwards hopes it’s him in control of the GTA purse, and possibly the future of Darjeeling. Others may not see it, but a pattern definitely emerges.

We all remember the infamous episode, when the GNLF sent an e-mail to Mamata Banerjee calling for talks at the height of 2017 Gorkhaland Andolan. Recently a GNLF leader Sandeep Limbu highlighted that the email was in all likelihood sent from an address associated with Edward’s.

Glenary’s was the first major business establishment to defy 2017 Andolan strike and open their doors for business, at a time when entire Darjeeling was shut down, united in demanding Gorkhaland.

I have always admired Ajoy Da, and personally I respect him deeply. What I fear is that in trying to cling on-to power in a body nobody wants – GTA, he is coming across as power-hungry, and doing himself a great dis-service. If I was him, I would have been the first to call for resignation from GTA, and put pressure on BJP Government, both in the state and the center to form Gorkhaland state or UT.

Ambition, masked in the form of altruism is one of the greatest evils. Public toilets have been sold in Darjeeling by individuals portraying the “humble to earth” persona. Edwards’ ambition could be harmful for the greater Gorkha cause.

All should ponder. Most of all he.

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1986 to 2026: A Common Citizen’s Plea for Darjeeling by Mohan Raj Thakuri explores how common citizens have been impacted due to the repeated Gorkhaland Andolan. Despite repeated deceit by opportunistic politicians, the aspiration continues to burn bright among common citizens.

I was only eight years old in 1986 when the weight of our identity first spilled onto our hill terrain. At that age, you don’t really understand the pulse of power, the politics of Delhi, or the complicated legal language of our country’s Constitution. You just remember how it felt to be a school going child in a home and neighborhood that was constantly on edge. I still remember the sudden curfews (144 Dhara legeko cha) , heavy silence that would fall over our small hamlet known as Ghoompahar, the moment a bandh was announced. I remember the closed school gates, shops , the empty playgrounds, roads , and the quiet, worried conversations my parents had in whispers around the kitchen fire while the tea grew cold.

Most of all, I remember the sound of thousands of footsteps marching through the thick  mist past our window. It was a rhythmic, unfamiliar thundering sound that shook the wooden floors of our old houses and embedded itself deep into my childhood memories .

Growing up in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong , Mirik or the hills means inheriting a dream that is much older than you are. It’s a beautiful but heavy legacy to carry. I am not a politician, and I don’t claim to be an expert or some highly educated scholar who debates our community’s future on television. I am just an ordinary, apolitical citizen who deeply loves this place , the soil, the community, and the people. Today, I am writing this because a deep sense of concern, mixed with a fragile ray of hope, inspired me to express out. I am praying for something positive, genuine, and lasting for the place I belong to.

The Power and Aura of a Name

Like many of you, I was scrolling through my phone recently when I came across the news updates capturing a significant moment from the state assembly’s Budget Session. Watching West Bengal Governor R.N. Ravi officially use the phrase “long drawn Gorkhaland issue” during his address stopped me in my tracks.

It hit me like an emotional wave. For decades, the administrative machinery in Kolkata carefully avoided that word. They treated it like a taboo, an illegal utterance. They preferred safe, diluted terms like “the hill problem”, “regional grievances”, or “administrative inconveniences”, as if we were just a minor headache to be dealt with through temporary financial packages. To see the current Newly formed state government under West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari explicitly lay out this issue by its true name from the floor of the Assembly is a massive, historic and welcoming shift. It feels like a quiet validation of the pain, the tears, and the sacrifices our families have made for generations.

But having said that, as ordinary people who have watched the seasons change and promises fade, we have also learned the hard way never to mistake a shift in political vocabulary for an actual shift in our destiny. A speech in a beautiful assembly hall is just air until it is forged into ironclad, unshakeable constitutional steel.

Identity Beyond Boundaries

To every single one of us, the word Gorkhaland is not just a collection of letters, nor is it merely a boundary line drawn on a political map. It is an emotional chord that strikes deep in our chests the moment it is spoken aloud. It connects us instantly across generations, across villages, and across rivers.

Yet, as we stand at this political crossroads, we must also remind ourselves of a much deeper, unshakeable truth that sits quietly beneath all our struggles : We are Gorkha and Proud to be Indian, with or without Gorkhaland.

Our grand history, our rich cultural heritage, our language, and our core identity do not rely solely on the name of a geographical place to exist. We were Gorkhas living in India long before these administrative lines were debated, and we will remain Gorkhas forever. Our worth is inherent; it is written in our blood, our traditions, and our contributions to this nation. But yes, while our identity cannot be erased by any government, we firmly aspire for Gorkhaland because it remains our preferred, definitive choice for a permanent political solution, a constitutional shield to protect and give a secure home to who we already are.

The Sacred Debt

We cannot talk about these aspirations without talking about the people who never made it back home. Our history isn’t just a timeline of political negotiations; it’s a reality paid for by the ultimate sacrifices of our own people. The initial fire of 1986-1988 claimed over twelve hundred brave lives.

These were ordinary citizens , fathers, brothers, mothers, and young students , whose lives were cut short, leaving behind empty chairs around kitchen fires all over the hills. And the spirit of defiance didn’t just disappear with that era. Decades later, the embers flared again. We watched a new generation step into the streets during the agitations of 2007, and most poignantly, during the exhausting 104-day shutdown of 2017. Once again, young boys and girls faced bullets, and blood stained our roads from Hill to Terai and Dooars.

The Sahid Diwas we observe , The Sahid Smarak and monuments scattered across our region are not just concrete structures to be cleaned , offer garland or bouquet on a particular day , once in a year . They are the resting places of an unfulfilled promise. Our martyrs did not lay down their lives for a minor administrative upgrade, a temporary financial package, or a fancy government car for a local leader. They sacrificed their today’s so that our children could inherit a secure, dignified tomorrow. Achieving a definitive, permanent political solution within the framework of the Indian Constitution is the only true tribute we can offer to their memory. Every time our leadership settles for a toothless, compromised arrangement, it dilutes the weight of that collective sacrifice. A lasting, unshakeable constitutional shield is not just a political demand; it is a sacred debt we owe to every single soul that returned to this earth in the name of our identity.

Looking Bluntly at Our Leadership

But if we are going to demand absolute administrative, legislative, and constitutional protections from the central and state governments, we must first have the courage to look at our own shattered leadership. The most tragic part of our history isn’t just how the outside world treated us; it is how easily we have allowed ourselves to be divided from within. Every single time our collective movement reaches a peak, when the entire population stands united as one heartbeat, our leadership seems to fracture. We have watched a heartbreaking cycle where leaders rise on the backs of ordinary citizens’ sacrifices, only to split into different factions, launch new political parties with new acronyms, and point fingers at one another the moment a seat of power, a financial package, or a VIP beacon car is offered.

The outside world finds it incredibly easy to dismiss us because we speak in ten different, conflicting voices. Our leaders must declare a truce on their personal ambitions and political survival tactics. They need to sit together in one room, lock the door, leave their egos and party flags outside, and create a single, unified front. If they cannot find the grace to unite for the sake of the very soil that gave them birth, they have no right to ask for our respect, our votes, or our faith.

The Trap of Hero Worship

We also need to talk about our own responsibility as common citizens. We constantly boast about our high literacy rates, our premier schools, and how educated our society is. But when it comes to local politics, we often park our collective intellect at the door and let raw emotion completely override our common sense. The moment a leader stands on a stage at Chowrasta, taps the microphone, and delivers a fiery, emotionally charged speech, we swallow everything told to us without asking a single practical question. We turn ordinary human beings into untouchable heroes, deifying them until they believe they are above accountability.

This dangerous tendency brings to my mind a profound warning by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. On November 25, 1949, during his final address to the Constituent Assembly right before the Indian Constitution was adopted, he cautioned the nation about the psychology of political devotion. He famously stated:

“Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

For decades in the hills, we have proven his words right. Every time we turn a politician into an untouchable idol, we surrender our own power. We stop being an aware, educated society and turn into a compliant crowd. A truly responsible citizen must start asking the hard, uncomfortable questions. Instead of just clapping and shouting slogans, we should be demanding the fine print. We need to ask our leaders: What is the actual, legal roadmap? Under which article of the Indian Constitution will this permanent solution exist? What are the explicit legislative powers? How will this solution protect the land rights, the pattas, of our tea garden workers and forest dwellers who have poured their sweat and blood into this soil for two centuries without owning a single inch of the land they live on? The day we start questioning our leaders instead of blindly Hero-worshiping them is the day our movement becomes truly powerful.

Blueprints Over Slogans and Columns

A modern political struggle in India cannot be won by emotional street agitations alone. It must be argued, clause by clause, in the halls of Parliament and before constitutional experts with flawless logic, historical data, and legal acumen. This is where our intellectuals – our teachers, professors, retired bureaucrats, researchers, and eminent writers and journalists have historically failed the common man by remaining on the comfortable sidelines of  being a silent critique or columnists.

We desperately need our finest minds to step into the arena. We cannot leave the drafting of our children’s future solely to career politicians who often cannot see past the next election cycle. We need our educated elite to come forward with their in-depth analytics and research-backed credentials. We need them to draft the definitive blueprints of what our aspirations actually look like on paper. They need to design sustainable economic models for our hills, create policies that protect our fragile, landslide-prone Himalayan ecology, and formulate the exact legal frameworks that will ensure whatever structure we receive can never be starved of funds or dissolved by the changing whims of a future cabinet in Kolkata. We must match the beautiful, raw emotion of the common citizen with the cold, precise intellect of a thoroughly prepared society.

A Lasting Justice

The current balanced political alignment offers a rare, historic window of opportunity. But as a community, we must refuse to be bought off with the crumbs of the past. We have lived through the experiments of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration frail, administrative bodies that served as nothing more than temporary bandages on a deep, historical wound. We do not want another compromise designed to buy temporary peace; we want a constitutional guarantee designed to deliver permanent justice.

The eight-year-old child who watched the hills shut down in a blur of fear and hope is an adult today, writing these words with a heart that refuses to become cynical. We are a generation that is deeply, profoundly tired. We are tired of the instability, the shattered academic calendars, the broken local economies, and the heartbreaking sight of our bright, educated youth being forced to migrate to distant cities like Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai or overseas just to find a basic livelihood. We love our home too much to watch it suffer in an endless loop of unfulfilled dreams.

Let us pray that our leaders find the enlightenment to unite, that we as citizens find the awareness to stay responsible, and that our finest intellectual minds guide our path. It is time for the mist rising over the Kanchenjunga to finally clear up, bringing with it the warmth of a dignified, permanent peace…Rest will follow.

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Freebies and Financial Mess – The Cost of Populism by Upendra examines how West Bengal’s economy has suffered under Freebie culture

In 2011, when the CPIM government lost power in West Bengal they left behind a debt of around Rs 1.75 lakh crores. Over the 15 years the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has added another Rs 6.25 lakh crores to this debt. Today the total debt of West Bengal is around Rs 7.75- Rs 8 lakh cr­­ores. Institutionalised fiscal mismanagement, has today turned West Bengal into what many economists call a “financial hell-hole”, where public resources go to die a slow and painful death by freebies. Public money is being wasted on things that do not help the state in the long run.

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government coming to power, there was hope that they would be more fiscally responsible, and they may be after six months in power. But as of today, they too seem to be eager to continuing down a similar path of unsustainable populism. The various freebies announced by the BJP pre-poll and their post-poll execution will significantly strain the state exchequer.

As of 2025 more than 2.2 crore women in West Bengal are getting money from the Laxmi Bhandar scheme. These women will also likely qualify to get Rs 3,000 per month from the “Annapurna Bhandar” scheme that the BJP has initiated. This will cost the state around Rs 79,200 crore every year.

There are also around 85 lakh unemployed youth who will get Rs 3,000 per month. This will cost the state further Rs 30,600 crore per year. The government also announced Rs 2,000 pensions for 45 lakh senior citizens and widows. This will cost an additional Rs 10,800 crore per year. These schemes alone will cost West Bengal over Rs 1.2 lakh crore every year.

The state is already paying a lot of money as interest on loans. In the year 2025-26 alone, West Bengal paid around Rs 50,000 crore as interest. This is an annually recurring cost that the government cannot avoid.

The Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari has said that the BJP government will continue all the welfare programmes started by the TMC. These include Kanyashree, which helps girls with education and costs Rs 16,554 crore. There is also Krishak Bandhu, which helps farmers and costs Rs 27,016 crore per year. Rupashree, which helps girls get married costs Rs 1,500 crore. Taruner Swapno, which gives tablets and smartphones to students costs Rs 1,000 crore per year. The state also spends around Rs 5,000 crore per year on schemes for Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes and Minorities.

All these “welfare schemes” cost around Rs 2.25 lakh crore every year. This money is not used to develop infrastructure, create jobs or help the economy grow.

The states own revenue projections showcase the massive financial abyss the state is staring into. The tax revenue collection for the year 2026-27 is estimated to be around Rs 2.19 lakh crore. This means that West Bengal will not have money to cover all the “freebies” they are giving out. I have not even included the cost of running the government like salaries and pensions for employees, or funds needed for developing the state.

The inevitable result will be that West Bengal will have to resort to further borrowing from markets or the Central Government to bridge the widening fiscal gap.

This cycle of debt and freebies has persisted across governments in West Bengal for over a decade and a half. What began under the Left Front and intensified under TMC, now risks becoming continued under BJP.

For the BJP government to succeed where CPIM and TMC have failed, it must take hard decisions and channelize these unproductive capital into productive avenues. The people of West Bengal do not want freebies, they would rather the government invested in infrastructure, skill development, developing industries, provisioning better schools, colleges and university level education, and sustainable rural and urban growth that would generate genuine jobs and revenue.

West Bengal possesses immense potential, yet its strategic location with a young demographic raring to go remain under-utilised. Redirecting even a fraction of the Rs 2.25 lakh crore currently locked in cash transfers towards capital expenditure could transform the state’s economy. Without such a shift, the “fiscal hell-hole” will only deepen, burdening future generations with interest payments and stalled development.

The new government has a narrow window to break this cycle. It is advisable that instead of continued populism which will perpetuate financial ruin of the state, the government should focus on being prudent today to ensure prosperity for the citizens’ tomorrow.

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Beyond Planting Trees : Restoring Native Forest and Freshwater Ecosystems In Darjeeling Himalaya Dr. Shailendra Dewan of Singell argues why restoring native ecology is important

Every year, World Environment Day reminds us of our collective responsibility towards the environment. Across the globe, tree-planting campaigns have become a symbol of environmental action, helping to raise awareness about conservation and climate change. While these efforts are important, the ecological future of the Darjeeling Himalaya depends on something broader and more enduring: the restoration of native forest and freshwater ecosystems.

The Darjeeling region forms part of the Eastern Himalaya, one of the world’s most significant biodiversity hot-spots. Its forests, rivers, streams, wetlands, and springs support an extraordinary diversity of life while providing essential ecosystem services that sustain local communities. Yet many of these ecosystems have been altered, fragmented, or degraded over time, reducing their ability to support biodiversity and maintain critical ecological functions.

A Landscape Shaped by History

The landscape of Darjeeling that we see today is very different from what existed two centuries ago. Our understanding of the region’s original ecological character comes not only from the remnant native forest patches that still survive across the landscape but also from the accounts of early naturalists and explorers who documented the region’s remarkable biodiversity.

Among the most notable of these was Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, whose Himalayan Journals provide vivid descriptions of the forests, vegetation, and plant diversity of the Eastern Himalaya during the mid-nineteenth century. Together, these historical accounts and the surviving forest remnants offer valuable insights into ecosystems that once extended across much of the region.

In his own word

“At about 1000 feet above Punkabaree, the vegetation is very rich, and appears all the more so from the many turnings of the road, affording glorious prospects of the foreshortened tropical forests. The prevalent timber is gigantic, and scaled by climbing Leguminosae, as Bauhinias and Robinias, which sometimes sheath the trunks, or span the forest with huge cables, joining tree to tree. Their trunks are also clothed with parasitical Orchids, and still more beautifully with Pothos (Scindapsus), Peppers, Gnetum, Vines, Convolvulus, and Bignoniæ. The beauty of the drapery of the Pothos-leaves is pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes, or for the liveliness of its colour” -Source The Himalayan Journal by JD Hooker

Prior to the colonial period, large areas of the lower and middle elevations, specifically in Darjeeling were covered by extensive subtropical and temperate broad-leaf forests that formed a continuous ecological network across the hills. During British rule, the landscape underwent a profound transformation as forests were cleared to establish tea plantations, settlements, roads, and other infrastructure. These changes shaped the economic and cultural identity of the region and continue to influence the landscape today. However, they also resulted in the fragmentation and loss of vast tracts of native forest ecosystems.

What remain today are often isolated patches of native vegetation embedded within tea estates, agricultural lands, village forests, and human settlements. Though fragmented, these remnants represent some of the last surviving examples of ecosystems that once dominated the Darjeeling Himalaya.

Why Native Ecosystems Matter

These remaining forests are far more than green spaces. They are complex living systems that support a remarkable diversity of plants, birds, butterflies, mammals, fungi, and microorganisms. Many species depend on these habitats for survival, while ecological interactions among pollinators, seed dispersers, decomposers, and plants maintain the functioning of the ecosystem. Several threatened species like Rufous Necked Hornbill, Himalayan Newt Salamander, Kaiser I Hind Butterflies exist in this region

Native forests also provide essential ecosystem services. They regulate water flows, recharge springs, stabilize mountain slopes, reduce soil erosion, store carbon, and help buffer communities against the impacts of climate change. Many of the remaining forest patches function as ecological corridors, allowing wildlife to move between habitats in an increasingly fragmented landscape.

The springs, streams, wetlands, and rivers associated with these forests are equally important. Together, forests and freshwater ecosystems form the ecological foundation upon which biodiversity, water security, and human well-being depend.

Restoration is More Than Planting Trees

Protecting these remaining ecosystems is essential, but protection alone is no longer sufficient. Many forest patches have become degraded due to habitat fragmentation, invasive species, unsustainable land-use practices, and the cumulative pressures of climate change.

Ecological restoration is often misunderstood as simply planting trees. In reality, restoration is about recovering entire ecosystems and the ecological processes that sustain them. A native forest is much more than a collection of trees. It is a living network of plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, soils, and water systems that interact over time to create resilient and functioning ecosystems.

Restoration therefore involves protecting remnant forests, encouraging natural regeneration, reconnecting fragmented habitats, restoring native vegetation, controlling invasive species, and ensuring that ecological processes such as pollination, seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and soil formation continue to function.

Importantly, restoration is not about recreating the past exactly as it was. Rather, it is about recovering ecological functions and reconnecting the remnants of native ecosystems that still persist across the landscape. By restoring these ecological connections, we can enhance biodiversity, strengthen water security, and build resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Reconnecting Forests and Freshwaters

The springs, streams, wetlands, and rivers of the Himalaya are ecological lifelines that connect mountains, forests, and communities. For generations, springs have served as primary sources of drinking water for villages and towns, while rivers and streams have supported agriculture, livelihoods, and biodiversity.

Forests and freshwater ecosystems are deeply interconnected. Healthy forests capture rainfall, enhance groundwater recharge, regulate runoff, and maintain the catchments that feed springs and streams. When forests are degraded, freshwater systems often become vulnerable as well.

Protecting spring recharge zones, restoring riparian vegetation along streams, rehabilitating degraded wetlands, and conserving river corridors are therefore integral components of ecosystem restoration. Such actions not only enhance biodiversity but also strengthen water security, reduce erosion and landslide risks, and improve resilience to climate variability.

Restoring freshwater ecosystems is particularly important in mountain regions where communities are increasingly facing seasonal water shortages and changing rainfall patterns. Healthy forests and healthy watersheds together form the foundation of long-term ecological and social resilience.

Restoration and Sustainable Livelihoods

Restoring ecosystems is not only about conservation; it is also about people.

Healthy native forests support a wide range of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) that contribute to rural livelihoods and cultural traditions. Seasonal collection of fiddle-head ferns (ningro), wild mushrooms, bamboo products, wild edible fruits, fodder resources, and medicinal and aromatic plants has long formed an important part of life in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya. These resources provide food, nutrition, traditional medicines, and supplementary income for many households while helping preserve traditional ecological knowledge passed down through generations.

Restoring native forest ecosystems can improve the availability and sustainability of these resources by enhancing habitat quality and supporting native plant diversity. When managed sustainably, these products can contribute to local economies while creating incentives for conservation.

Restoration can also create new opportunities through nature-based tourism. Forest trails, bird-watching routes, butterfly walks, nature interpretation centres, spring tourism, and community-managed ecotourism initiatives can generate income while promoting environmental stewardship. The region’s exceptional biodiversity offers unique opportunities for wildlife observation, photography, environmental education, and citizen science activities that attract visitors from across India and beyond.

As native biodiversity recovers, it can also create opportunities for a new generation of local entrepreneurs. Young people can develop enterprises linked to ecotourism, birdwatching and butterfly guiding, homestays, biodiversity documentation, native plant nurseries, sustainable NTFP value chains, environmental education, and ecosystem restoration services. Such opportunities can diversify rural economies and generate meaningful employment rooted in local landscapes and cultures.

In a region where many young people migrate outside in search of work, nature-based enterprises can offer viable livelihood alternatives closer to home. Ecosystem restoration can therefore help create conditions that encourage some youth to return, invest their skills locally, and build businesses around the region’s unique natural heritage. In this way, restoration becomes not only an investment in biodiversity and water security but also an investment in people, livelihoods, and the future of mountain communities.

Healthy ecosystems also support agriculture through pollination services, improve water availability, reduce disaster risks, enhance climate resilience, and strengthen local economies. In mountain landscapes where people and nature are closely interconnected, ecosystem restoration is an investment in both ecological and economic well-being.

A Shared Responsibility for the Future

The future of conservation in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya will depend not only on what happens within protected areas but also on how we manage the wider landscape where people live, farm, and work. Tea estates, village communities, educational institutions, local governments, civil society organizations, and individual landowners all have important roles to play in restoring ecological connectivity across the region.

As we mark World Environment Day, it is worth remembering that the ultimate goal is not simply to increase tree cover. It is to restore healthy, connected, and resilient ecosystems that can sustain both biodiversity and human well-being.

The forests, springs, streams, and rivers of Darjeeling and Sikkim are part of a shared natural heritage. Protecting and restoring these ecosystems today will help ensure that future generations inherit landscapes that remain rich in biodiversity, secure in water resources, economically vibrant, and resilient in the face of environmental change.

The future of Darjeeling and Sikkim depends not only on conserving the remnants of its natural heritage but also on restoring the ecological connections that once linked forests, springs, streams, and rivers across the landscape. By investing in ecosystem restoration today, we can build landscapes that support biodiversity, strengthen livelihoods, secure water resources, create opportunities for future generations, and sustain both people and nature for years to come

About the author: Dr. Sailendra Dewan is a research associate with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). He is originally from Singell Tea Estate in Kurseong. His research pursuits are centered around macro-ecology, bio-geography, and community ecology of fauna, focusing on insects in mountain ecosystems. He currently involved in establishing a comprehensive and long-term monitoring program for butterflies alongside investigating the effects of climate change and habitat degradation in the Indian Himalayan Region.

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BJP May not be ready for Gorkhaland, Gorkhas are – Upendra argues we are capable enough to run our own state even if local BJP leaders may have doubts about their own abilities

A few days after winning elections, BJP Darjeeling District President Sanjeev Lama made a proclamation, “Gorkhas are not ready for Gorkhaland”. He defended the statement by saying that our youths need to be involved in politics and we need to remove the old-guards who have used “Gorkhaland sentiment” only as a tool for earning their livelihood. As if the political-suicide wasn’t over, Sanjeev Lama doubled down in a press meet and further said, “look around you won’t find a single, honest, capable Gorkha leader who is ready to be the Chief Minister”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I watched that twice just to make sure what I heard was right.

Perhaps what he didn’t anticipate was the immediate question asked by the journalist present there, “Do you mean to say even Sanjeev Lama is not honest or capable of being a Chief Minister?”

In proclaiming that, there is not a single honest Gorkha capable of becoming a Chief Minister, perhaps Sanjeev forgot that he too is a Gorkha, and that he too could become the Chief Minister, if Gorkhaland state was formed.

But, what he said had me extremely worried.

He is a Gorkhaland premi, as much as you and I. He too had to go underground following the 2017 Andolan. He parted ways with Bimal Gurung when Bimal supported Mamata Banerjee in 2021. So Sanjeev is who has remained true to the Gorkha cause. But imagine, what kind of political realization must have he come to, to be so convinced, that there’s not a single honest Gorkha, capable of leading Gorkhaland statehood.

This brings me to a greater worry.

If BJP District President is convinced that Gorkhas are not ready for Gorkhaland, who else is convinced similarly? Does this chain of thought extend to MP Raju Bista, Home Minister Amit Shaha and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well, or is this line of thought confined to Kolkata-BJP alone?

Way before any of us were born, our ancestors understood the need for a separate administrative set-up for the Gorkhas, which is why the demand for autonomy for our region extends back to 1907. When gentle reminders didn’t work, it led to the 1986-88 andoland for Gorkhaland statehood. Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council was established in 1988, which failed to meet the aspirations of the people. This resulted in Gorkhaland statehood demands from 2007-2011, in 2013 after Telangana was formed, and in 2017 after West Bengal government under TMC tried to make impose Bengali language on the Gorkhas.

Over the decades I have been on this planet, I have seen Gorkha people mature politically, economically, educationally and in every other way possible.

Today Gorkhas are everywhere, from being Scientists in ISRO to teaching in IITs and IIMs, from flying fighter-jets to conducting path-breaking research top universities in India and internationally. Gorkhas are some of the top ranked Army Officers and academics, actors, singers, administrators and what not.

What they lack is a political space.

Be honest to yourself, can a Gorkha ever aspire to be the Chief Minister of West Bengal? Since Independence, name one Gorkha Minister in the Central Government?

Despite being capable in every other way, we – the Gorkhas have been sidelined politically. Which is why, this need and demand for Political autonomy exists.

BJP may think that Gorkhas are not ready for Gorkhaland, but Gorkhas know, we are. However, in articulating this, perhaps the BJP District President is hinting at the fact that BJP may renege on their pre-poll promise, which they have been making since 2009.

As the American writer Robert G. Ingersoll once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but to test the character, give him power…”

Perhaps, after coming to Power, BJP is starting to show their true character. Beware Gorkhas.

The post BJP May Not be Ready for Gorkhaland, Gorkhas Are! appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Siliguri District and The Hollowing Out of Darjeeling, author Anjani Sharma Bhujel explains how a proposed new district of Siliguri would formalise forty years of quiet extraction from the hills

The recent proposal to form a separate district of Siliguri, and cut it away from Darjeeling is not a sudden change. It marks the end of a forty-year shift, where resources meant for the hills have quietly moved to the plains. Making Siliguri a new district would lock in this imbalance and break the territorial basis of the Gorkha claim, which is older than Indian Independence. This could happen without any debate in the legislative assembly, or the Parliament.

Leaders from Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Kalimpong, Siliguri, and Dooars owe the people a clear public stance. Staying silent is also a choice. Every elected representative from Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Kalimpong, Siliguri and Dooars owe the people of the hills a clear, public position. Their silence is itself a position.

The proposal on the table

The new district idea has been set in motion with a letter sent by the Matigara-Naxalbari BJP MLA Anandamay Barman to the chief minister. The letter suggests that the entire Siliguri sub-division, Matigara, Naxalbari, Phansidewa and Khoribari blocks, be separated from Darjeeling and joined with the Dabgram-Fulbari areas of Jalpaiguri district, to form a new district called Siliguri.

There is a new government in the state, of which MLA Anandmay Barman is a second time elected leader, and Siliguri MLA Shankar Ghosh and Phansidewa MLA Druga Murmu on the treasury benches, who could push forward with this.

Since, this is just at a proposal state, we still have time to make a strong case against the separation of our historic territorial areas. But for that to happen, the arguments and resistance against any such move must begin now.

The Siliguri district proposal does not arrive in isolation. In the same fortnight in May 2026, the new state government has cleared the transfer of seven national highway stretches from the state PWD to central agencies, with NHAI taking over NH-31, NH-33 and NH-312, and NHIDCL taking over the Sevoke-Coronation Bridge stretch, Siliguri-Darjeeling stretch, the Hasimara-Jaigaon route and the Changrabandha corridor. Five of the seven stretches pass through the Siliguri Corridor itself. NH-10 to Sikkim and NH-110 to Darjeeling, the two highways most directly serving the hills are among those, now under central control.

In parallel, the state has transferred one hundred and twenty acres of land in the Chicken’s Neck to the Border Security Force for India-Bangladesh border fencing. Three substantial restructurings of North Bengal’s administrative geography in three weeks, all under a national-security framing, all moving at a pace that previous state governments had been unable or unwilling to match.

I strongly believe, among all these, the Siliguri district proposal is the most consequential of the three because it changes the civil-administrative authority over land, people, revenue and policing. It is not just the engineering control of road surfaces or the fencing of a border line, yet it is not separate from the other. They constitute a pattern, and the pattern itself merits attention.

The slow shift of power that nobody noticed

It is not impulsive idea to separate Siliguri off from Darjeeling. It’s the official recognition of the process, which has been ongoing, administratively and developmentally, for much of the last forty years. The power in our region has been gradually shifted from the hills to the plains. Institutions and infrastructure have been allocated for the entire district of Darjeeling, was cunningly spent and shifted to a single sub-division, which is now proposed to be a new district.

The institutional drift must be taken into account first. The Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad was set up in 1989 as a sub-divisional council which has district level powers, the only one of its kind in entire India.

In 1994 the Siliguri Municipal Corporation was formed with forty seven wards in two districts, and the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority was formed to garner urban-planning powers which were previously held by the Darjeeling district administration.

Siliguri Police Commissionerate was established in 2012, with the jurisdiction of over 640 sq kilometers of Siliguri city and the adjoining sub-urban areas in the plains.

Every single step, seen in isolation seemed in each case to be a legitimate urban-administrative reform. But when seen holistically, it clearly emerges that they were all a part of the major plan, without anyone being aware of it as a part of the one larger project – to separate Siliguri from Darjeeling. The hills weren’t complaining. In most cases the hills did not even know what happened, they were occupied in changing flags and establishing new kings.  

Let’s now look at the developmental drift, which is the more significant half of the story. It was established in 1962 with the aim of catering the needs of the entire region, the University of North Bengal was located in Matigara, in the plains, not in the hills, at Raja Rammohanpur.

In 1968, the Medical College of North Bengal was established to cater to the population of the same region and was located once again in the plains at Sushrutnagar in Matigara. In 1990, North Bengal Dental College was built and now it is housed at Matigara.

Bagdogra airport, in Darjeeling district by virtue of sitting in Naxalbari block, was built and progressively upgraded through grants attributed to district aviation infrastructure, with every new runway extension and terminal expansion booked to the district’s account.

The Industrial Estate of North Bengal was established at Matigara. NH 4 to Sikkim was four laned in Siliguri sub-division. No parts of the Asian Highway corridor, which connects Bhutan/India and Bangladesh is outside the proposed carve-out area as it goes through Bagdogra and Phulbari.

The recently announced underground railway to pass through the Siliguri corridor, which is of national-security importance in the field of defence logistics and is worth several thousand crore rupees, ends at Siliguri sub-division.

On paper, every one of these is “Darjeeling district infrastructure,” paid for out of central and state allocations attributed to a district whose three hill sub-divisions never saw the spending.

This is the main problem with the Siliguri district proposal, and it should be said plainly. For the last forty years, Siliguri’s progress has been counted as “Darjeeling district’s” success. The airport appears in the tourism brochures. University appear in the education ministry reports. The medical college appears in the health budget speeches. The highway appears in the NHAI map books. The hills have been the brand; the plains have been the beneficiary.

The plan-document accounting that allowed central and state allocations to flow into Siliguri infrastructure under the heading of “Darjeeling district development” has been the financial mechanism through which the hills have funded their own marginalization. Money meant for Darjeeling’s development was mostly spent in Siliguri, so the hills ended up paying for their own neglect. 

Technically and legally every rupee spent in Matigara, Naxalbari, Bagdogra was the rupee of the district, it was also the hills’ rupee since the hills were part of the district. None of it returned to the hills. None of the institutions built with it serve the hills directly. None of the highway alignments reach the hills.

When Siliguri is carved out as a separate district, every one of those assets physically leaves with it. They were never retained by the hills in any meaningful administrative sense. They merely appeared in Darjeeling district statistics, in its audited accounts, in its representation to Delhi and Kolkata. After the carve-out, even that fiction ends. That is the total inheritance of forty years of being “Darjeeling district” while Siliguri’s growth was being recorded as the district’s growth.

The hills produce, Siliguri trades

The institutional drift described above has hardened into a single contemporary reality. Darjeeling district today is a producer-region whose produce is monetised, traded, valued and taxed almost entirely in Siliguri.

The best-known example is, of course, the tea of Darjeeling. The premium GI Marked leaf grown in the eighty-seven recognised gardens above 1,000 metres in the areas of Darjeeling-Pulbazar, Kurseong, Mirik, Jorebunglow-Sukhia and Rangli-Rangliot is auctioned in the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre. The centre started in 1976 and is one of the major tea auctions in India, and where a hill kilogram of tea turns into a national or international price. Auctioneer commissions, brokerage fees, warehousing rents and the GST on the sale all accrue to the place of auction.

The growers retain the cost of production and a fraction of the realised price. The value is captured in Siliguri.

The same pattern repeats across every category of hill produce. The Siliguri Regulated Market, or mandi of Siliguri is one of the biggest wholesale markets for agriculture products from the hills and Terai to the plains, to the rest of India and the trans-shipment routes to Bhutan, Bangladesh and the North East.

In Bidhan Market, wholesale fruit and vegetables, oranges from Sittong, Mirik, cardamom from higher slopes and ginger from Kurseong-Pulbazar are sold. Siliguri is the entry point for every single source of income from a hill harvest that is recorded as a national number, ranging from mandi cess to market-yard fees, weighbridge charges, the margin of the commission agents, cold-chain rents and export-pipeline tariffs via the Phulbari Land Customs Station.

Add to this the Tea Board of India’s Siliguri Regional Office at the Sahid Bhagat Singh Commercial Complex on Sevoke Road, the head offices of every major tea broker and exporter, the agricultural marketing committee, the GST registration desks for tea and horticulture traders, the cold-chain certification authorities, the spice and cardamom grading laboratories.

All of them sit in Siliguri. All of them administer the conversion of hill output into recorded national value.

That last fact deserves a pause. The Tea Board of India is the statutory regulator for the most famous mountain tea in the world. It could have placed its regional office at Darjeeling town, the global brand name stamped on every premium tin shipped to London, Tokyo and Berlin. It chose Sevoke Road, Siliguri.

The world’s most famous hill tea is regulated from the plains, and the arrangement is so old that no one any longer finds it strange. The hills grow and produce. Siliguri trades and earns. The transfer is administered today under the legal fiction that both belong to the same district. After the carve-out, that legal fiction disappears.

The hills become a producer-region for a trading hub that is no longer even nominally their own. The economic asymmetry that has existed for decades becomes formal, administrative and structural, written into the district map.

A grower in Mirik will continue to bring oranges to the Regulated Market at Siliguri, but the market fee, the licence, the storage rent and the export tariff will enter the books of a different district. A tea garden in Jorebunglow will continue to send its first-flush kilograms to the Siliguri auction centre, but the auction commission, the brokerage and the GST on the sale will all be recorded as Siliguri district revenue, not Darjeeling’s. The arrangement as it exists today is extractive in economic terms but at least notionally unified administratively.

The proposed arrangement is extractive in economic terms and formally separated administratively. There is a name for that pattern. It is the relationship a colonial power maintains with a producing hinterland whose trade it controls, but whose autonomy it does not concede.

What physically walks out of Darjeeling district

A district is not a sentiment. It is a balance sheet. Remove the Siliguri sub-division out of Darjeeling and the following physically leaves: Bagdogra International Airport, the only commercial airport serving Sikkim, Bhutan and the eastern Himalayas; the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital at Sushrutnagar in Matigara, the only tertiary referral hospital for hill residents, tea-garden workers and the working poor across three districts; the University of North Bengal at Raja Rammohunpur, the only state university for the region; the North Bengal Dental College; the entire industrial belt that runs from Matigara through Bagdogra to Naxalbari; the Mechi land border crossing at Panitanki, which is the only commercial road border with eastern Nepal in this part of India; and every single kilometre of district’s international border with Bangladesh, which runs through Phansidewa and Kharibari blocks.

Let me remind you again these are not just places or landmarks they are sources of income, trade and revenue of the Darjeeling district.

What Darjeeling district retains after the carve-out is five hill blocks: Darjeeling-Pulbazar, Jorebunglow-Sukhiapokhri, Rangli-Rangliot, Kurseong and Mirik. It retains the district headquarters at Darjeeling town, the three hill municipalities, the UNESCO World Heritage Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the premium GI-marked Darjeeling tea gardens, and a stretch of hill border with Nepal and the interstate border with Sikkim, none of which carry commercial crossings of any consequence.

The district would have no airport. No university. No medical college. No international border with Bangladesh. No revenue base of any substance beyond cyclical tea and seasonal tourism. The district’s population, currently around eighteen lakh after the 2017 Kalimpong bifurcation, would fall to roughly seven or eight lakh, making it the least populous district in West Bengal, smaller than every other district in North Bengal, and administered from a district headquarters whose own town has a population of just over a lakh.

It would not be a district in any meaningful administrative sense. It would be a museum with a DM’s office.

The people who pay the price first

The arithmetic of district reorganisation hides behind the language of administrative efficiency, but its weight falls on people who do not write newspaper columns.

A tea worker from a Mirik garden referred for emergency cardiac care travels today to NBMCH at Matigara. After the carve-out, that hospital sits in a different district. The administrative machinery of inter-district referrals, ambulance transport tie-ups, welfare-payment routing and labour-board adjudication, running poorly enough when one DM signs both ends of a file, degrades further when two DMs are involved. The patient does not experience this as paperwork. The patient experiences it as a delay.

A student from Kurseong or Kalimpong attending the University of North Bengal sits for examinations governed by a new Siliguri DM and a Siliguri Police Commissionerate that have no political stake in the hills.

Hostel disputes, identity verification, scholarship disbursements all route through an administration whose constituency lies elsewhere.

None of this is theoretical. The 2017 Gorkhaland bandh demonstrated, with brutal clarity, what happens when the plains and the hills fall out of administrative or political sync. There was an estimated daily loss of Rs 2 crore for Siliguri businesses, hill establishments unable to receive supplies, tea consignments stranded at NJP. The Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of North Bengal estimated then that some 75 per cent of Siliguri’s commerce depended on the Sikkim-Darjeeling axis. The plains-hills relationship is functional infrastructure. The proposal treats it as a wall.

The Gorkhaland question, and why this is the heart of the matter

Here is the part that has not been said loudly enough, and which transforms this from an administrative debate into a constitutional one.

The Gorkhaland demand, as articulated continuously since the Hillmen’s Association petition of 1907, through the All India Gorkha League’s formation in 1943, through Subash Ghisingh’s GNLF in 1980 and Bimal Gurung’s GJM thereafter, has never been a demand for the three hill subdivisions alone. It has been, from the very first petition, a demand for the contiguous Nepali-speaking territory of North Bengal, comprising the hills, the Terai and the Nepali-majority pockets of the Dooars.

Every map of proposed Gorkhaland, in every iteration of the movement, has included substantial parts of Siliguri sub-division and large tracts of what is today Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts.

This is not an academic point. The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Act of 2011, which the present West Bengal chief minister herself signed into law, explicitly placed eighteen mouzas of Siliguri sub-division within GTA jurisdiction. Those mouzas lie in Naxalbari and Matigara, the very blocks Barman’s letter now proposes to detach.

The Centre’s Permanent Political Solution process for the Gorkhaland question, on which former BSF Director-General Pankaj Kumar Singh was appointed interlocutor in 2024, is premised on assessing exactly which Terai and Dooars areas should be folded into any future autonomy or statehood arrangement.

A separate Siliguri district pre-empts that process.

Once Naxalbari, Matigara, Phansidewa, Kharibari and the Dabgram-Fulbari belt are constituted as a single administrative unit headquartered in Siliguri city, with its own DM, its own SP, its own bureaucratic identity, its own assembly representation that focuses around plains demographics, its own development authority and its own revenue lines, bringing any of these areas back into a future Gorkhaland becomes politically and administratively far harder.

A district once created in India is almost never uncreated. The carve-out is, in plain language, a quiet pre-settlement of the territorial component of the Gorkhaland question, done without consultation with hill parties, without Parliament, without a referendum, and without the political-solution framework the Government of India has nominally committed to.

The people advocating the proposal know this. The MLAs proposing it represent Matigara-Naxalbari and Siliguri, the very constituencies whose Gorkha and Adivasi voters would, in any honest accounting, have a stake in whether their mouzas join a future Gorkhaland or stay in a Bengal-administered Siliguri district. The proposal asks them to make that decision now, in 2026, without admitting it is being made.

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.

Table 2: Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste populations in the affected blocks (Census 2011).

Limb by limb: the geography of a vanishing homeland

The Gorkhaland demand at its origin was for a contiguous territory of roughly thirteen thousand square kilometres covering the hills, the Terai and the Nepali-majority Dooars. Look at a map of that territory today and trace what has been taken from it, one administrative decision at a time.

The Dooars came off first. The Nepali-majority blocks of Banarhat, Birpara, Madarihat, Kalchini and Kumargram, with their tea-garden populations of Gorkha and Adivasi workers, were quietly removed from administrative consideration when Subash Ghisingh accepted the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council in 1988.

The DGHC covered only the hills. The Dooars demand was deferred, with assurances that it would be addressed in a fuller settlement. It never was. Forty years later, those blocks remain in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts, administered by DMs who have no political stake in the Gorkha question.

An entire wing of the original homeland was traded for a hill council, and the hill leadership of the day accepted that trade.

The next reduction came with the 2011 GTA Act, when Bimal Gurung signed an agreement that covered the hills plus eighteen mouzas of Siliguri sub-division. Eighteen mouzas out of an originally claimed territory containing many more.

The rest of the Terai was again deferred. The political logic was familiar. A bigger council than the DGHC, more powers, more positions, more patronage. In exchange, a smaller territory than originally claimed. The Gorkha leadership of the day accepted that trade too.

Now the proposed Siliguri district takes those eighteen mouzas off the table altogether. After the carve-out, the Terai is no longer even nominally within reach of any future Gorkhaland settlement. What began as a claim to roughly thirteen thousand square kilometres of hills, Terai and Dooars is being reduced, by successive administrative decisions made over forty years, to roughly two thousand square kilometres of hills alone.

Each reduction was accepted by the hill leadership of the time on the same logic: the offer of a kingdom, however small, in exchange for the surrender of a claim, however historic.

It is worth saying this plainly, because no one in the hill leadership has been willing to. The geographical fragmentation of the Gorkha homeland has not happened only because successive state governments wanted it. It has happened because successive generations of hill leaders preferred the certainty of a position over the uncertainty of a principle.

Ghisingh chose the DGHC chairmanship over continuing the Gorkhaland agitation in its full territorial form. Gurung chose the GTA chief executive’s office over insisting on the full territorial scope of the original demand. Anit Thapa today runs a GTA whose boundaries were drawn by an agreement his predecessor signed and whose territorial claim he has not publicly insisted upon since taking office. Each generation of leadership has accepted a smaller body with greater personal authority in place of a larger claim with greater collective meaning. The Gorkhaland map has shrunk in exact proportion to the careers built on its diminution.

The Siliguri district proposal asks the current generation of hill leadership to make the same trade one more time. To accept the carve-out, quietly, in exchange for the continued running of a hill council whose territory shrinks every decade. If they accept it, the next reduction is not difficult to imagine. A future state government, looking at a Darjeeling district reduced to five hill blocks and seven lakh people, will note that the hills could be reorganised more efficiently still. There will be proposals to merge sub-divisions. To rationalise municipal boundaries. To absorb the GTA into a more compact administrative unit. Each of these will be presented as a small adjustment. Each will be accepted, if past is prologue, in exchange for some new sinecure.

The hill leadership must understand that there is no point at which this process stops by itself. It stops when the leadership refuses to trade territory for position. The Siliguri carve-out is the place to refuse. After it, there is not much left to refuse over.

Figure 3: The Gorkhaland territorial claim, compressed  across four decades.

The habit of protesting too late

There is a second pattern, related to the first, that the hills must break if any of the above arguments are to matter. It is the habit of reacting to decisions only after they have been finalised.

The history of the Gorkhaland movement, viewed honestly, is a history of bandhs called too late. The agitation of 1986 to 1988 came after decades of administrative decisions had already settled the status quo. The bandh of 2007 came after the DGHC’s territorial limits had been accepted for nineteen years. The bandh of 2013 came after the GTA Act of 2011 had already codified the eighteen-mouza compromise. The hundred-and-four-day bandh of 2017 came after the GTA was already a functioning institution running on the very terms the bandh purported to reject.

Each agitation was a protest against a decision the hill leadership had failed to oppose at the moment it was being made. Each ended in an exhausted negotiation that delivered less than the bandh had demanded.

This is not a coincidence of personalities. It is a structural failing of how hill politics has organised itself. The Gorkha public discourse mobilises around symbols and grievances after the administrative substance has been settled, rather than engaging with the administrative substance before it hardens. Decisions are taken in cabinet rooms in Kolkata and Delhi while hill leaders are touring constituencies.

By the time the gazette notification arrives, the political space for opposition has already collapsed into the narrow choice between a destructive bandh and a humiliating acceptance.

The proposed Siliguri district is, at this moment, still a proposal. It is a 2025 letter from a BJP MLA to a chief minister, picked up by a 2026 state government that may yet be persuaded to slow down. It has not been gazetted. It has not been notified. The asset-transfer arithmetic has not been published. The consultation with the GTA has not happened. The political risk assessment for the Gorkhaland and Kamtapur questions has not been written, let alone debated. This is the window in which proactive opposition can actually shape the outcome. After gazette notification, the only response left will be a bandh, by which time the carve-out will be administratively irreversible and a thousand crores of business will have been lost in the hills and the plains for a result that was decided months earlier.

The hills must learn, before another decade of reactive politics passes, that statehood is built in the years before the decision and not in the weeks after it. Memorandums must be filed now, while the proposal is still a letter. Legal opinions must be sought now, while the cabinet has not yet considered it. Cross-party hill meetings must be convened now, while the issue is still amenable to compromise.

The tea industry, the chambers of commerce, the university faculty, the GTA, the church and monastery networks must be persuaded to take public positions now, while their positions can still influence the drafting of the proposal. Memoranda submitted after gazette notification end up in archive folders. Memoranda submitted before it end up in cabinet briefing notes.

This requires a different kind of politics than the hill leadership has practised for forty years. It requires patience. It requires research. It requires the willingness to engage with state-government file numbers and central-government interlocutor schedules rather than with the more emotionally satisfying language of grievance.

It is, in short, the politics of foresight rather than the politics of reaction. The Gorkhaland movement, if it is to mean anything at this stage of its history, must learn to fight for its territory at the moment the territory is being redrawn, not in the months after the new map has been printed.

Table 3: Major Gorkhaland bandhs and the decisions they were reacting to.

Why every hill politician must speak, and what their silence so far reveals

This is what makes the silence of the hill leadership the single most disturbing feature of the present moment.

Anit Thapa’s Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha, which controls the GTA, has issued no public position on the Siliguri district proposal. Yet the GTA’s territorial coherence depends precisely on those eighteen Siliguri sub-division mouzas remaining within reach of any future settlement. BGPM lost the Darjeeling assembly seat to BJP’s Noman Rai in 2026. It cannot afford a second strategic loss by default.

Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, the original architect of the post-Ghisingh phase of the Gorkhaland movement, has been quiet. Mann Ghisingh’s Gorkha National Liberation Front, the formal custodian of the founding demand, has been quiet. Ajoy Edwards’ Hamro Party and the Indian Gorkha Janshakti Front, which built their political identity on a critique of the older parties’ inertia, have been quiet.

The two BJP MLAs who proposed this, Anandamay Barman and Shankar Ghosh, owe their constituents an explanation of how a separate Siliguri district is compatible with the Permanent Political Solution that their own party’s MP from Darjeeling, Raju Bista, has been demanding since 2019.

Bista himself has so far avoided the question. He cannot keep doing so. The Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency covers every assembly seat at stake. If its MP cannot articulate a position on whether these blocks belong administratively to the hills or to the plains, the seat itself has stopped speaking for its people.

The tea industry has stayed out of the conversation. So have the chambers of commerce, the hoteliers, the transport associations, the university faculty, the church and monastery networks. Each of them stands to be directly affected. Each of them has, until now, treated this as a debate for politicians. It is not. It is a debate about which DM signs which licence, which sub-divisional officer routes which welfare scheme, which Commissionerate registers which company.

Silence will not protect them from the consequences. It will only make them irrelevant to a decision being taken about them.

The right way to do this, if it must be done

We are not blind to the problems of Siliguri. None of this is an argument that Siliguri’s current governance arrangements are adequate. They are not. Siliguri’s urban agglomeration of more than twelve lakh people, expanding to roughly eighteen lakh across the wider area proposed for the new district, cannot reasonably be administered from a hill district headquarters more than seventy kilometres away.

The Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad model has run out of administrative road, and there is a legitimate case for stronger local governance for the Siliguri urban area, but the legitimate response to that problem is not a unilateral district carve-out.

It is, at minimum, three things. First, a public feasibility study covering revenue impact on Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the asset-transfer arithmetic, and a formal political risk assessment for the Gorkhaland and Kamtapur questions, published in full, not whispered between cabinet secretaries.

Second, a formal consultation with the GTA, with hill parties of every persuasion, with Adivasi and Rajbanshi community organisations whose ancestral territories are also at stake, and with the Centre’s Permanent Political Solution interlocutor.

Third, an explicit written commitment, gazetted, not merely promised, that the creation of any Siliguri district does not foreclose the territorial scope of the Gorkhaland settlement currently under negotiation and Siliguri if a district made will be a part of the state created.

If those three things cannot be done, the proposal should not proceed. If they can be done, the hills will have a fair say. Either way, the present trajectory of a 2025 MLA’s letter, a sympathetic 2026 government, no public study, no consultation and no commitment, is unacceptable.

First restore, then separate

If, despite all of the arguments above, the new state government is determined to proceed with a separate Siliguri district, there is one further principle that must be conceded before any line is drawn. It is a principle that gives the carve-out, at minimum, the moral cover of fairness rather than the appearance of theft.

It is this. For forty years, institutions and infrastructure built in the name of Darjeeling district have been physically placed in Siliguri, paid for out of allocations attributed to a district whose hill sub-divisions saw none of the actual investment. The University of North Bengal, the North Bengal Medical College, the North Bengal Dental College, the Tea Board’s Siliguri Regional Office, the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre, the Regulated Market for hill produce, the airport runway upgrades, the AH-grade highway alignments, the upgraded NH 10 to Sikkim. Every one of them was funded as Darjeeling district development. Every one of them serves the hills nominally. Very few of them serve the hills in practice. The hills have been the financial guarantor and the brand-name of a development pattern that has benefited the plains.

If Siliguri is now to be carved out as a separate district, those accumulated investments cannot simply walk out unaccompanied. The principle that must be established, in writing, in cabinet resolution, gazetted before any district notification, is that separation requires restitution.

What was built in the hills’ name must, before the line is drawn, either be relocated to serve the hills, or be financially settled in their favour, or be placed under joint administrative arrangements that guarantee hill access and a hill revenue-share.

In concrete terms, that means at least four things. First, a one-time capital settlement transferred from the new Siliguri district to the residual Darjeeling district, calculated on the audited share of central and state allocations attributed to Darjeeling district that were physically spent in Siliguri sub-division over the last twenty years.

Second, a commitment to build hill-located satellites of the major institutions. These would include a North Bengal University campus in Kurseong or Darjeeling, a tertiary referral hospital in the hills with referral parity to NBMCH, a tea auction sub-centre with priority handling for GI-marked Darjeeling tea, and a fully operational airstrip in the hills with state subsidy on essential connectivity routes.

Third, ongoing revenue-share arrangements on the trade of Darjeeling-branded produce, since the “Darjeeling” name remains owned by the hills regardless of which district handles the auction.

Fourth, joint administrative arrangements over the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre, the Tea Board Siliguri Regional Office and the Siliguri Regulated Market, with formal hill representation on their governing bodies.

These are not radical demands. They are the minimum that any honest district reorganisation in India should provide, and they have in fact been provided elsewhere.

When Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the financial settlement between the two states ran into thousands of crores and inter-state asset-sharing arrangements continue to this day. When Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, large parts of the legacy administrative apparatus were either physically relocated to Dehradun or settled in the new state’s favour. The Kalimpong carve-out of 2017, by contrast, transferred few accumulated assets because Kalimpong had few. The Alipurduar carve-out of 2014 was geographically clean.

Siliguri’s case is qualitatively different from both. It would take with it the single largest concentration of accumulated public investment in any West Bengal district bifurcation since the state was constituted. That makes the restitution principle non-negotiable.

The proposal currently on the table makes no such provision. It assumes, silently, that the hills will accept the carve-out and the asset transfer as a fait accompli. It assumes they have already conceded their claim to forty years of investment recorded in their name. The hills must insist on the opposite principle. Nothing leaves without an honest accounting. First restore, then separate. If the new state government refuses, the answer is straightforward. The carve-out cannot proceed.

A decision being made in your name

The people of Darjeeling district, in both the hills and the plains, are about to have a decision made about them without being asked. They will lose their airport, their medical college, their university, their international borders and the better part of their economic base. They will, in addition, lose the territorial integrity of a Gorkha claim that pre-dates Indian Independence itself, not by argument, not by referendum, not by parliamentary debate, but by an administrative notification quietly tabled at a state cabinet meeting and signed into effect.

This is the moment for the hill leadership to speak. The list of those who must speak includes BGPM, GJM, GNLF, Hamro Party, the BJP MP, the BJP MLAs who proposed it, the tea industry, the hoteliers, the academics, the church and monastery networks, and the civil society of Darjeeling town, Kurseong, Kalimpong and Mirik. Not in private channels. Not after the fact. In public, in print, in the Assembly, in the Lok Sabha, in the streets if necessary.

The case against this proposal can be made on revenue grounds, on connectivity grounds, on people’s welfare grounds, on Gorkhaland-question grounds. Any one of those would be sufficient. Taken together, they are overwhelming.

The hills have been told for forty years that their demands are too inconvenient, too divisive, too premature, too late. They have been asked to wait. While they have waited, the plains beneath them have been administered, developed, contested and, now, prepared to be detached.

The proposal to carve Siliguri out of Darjeeling is not a routine administrative reform. It is the most consequential territorial decision affecting the Gorkha people since the GTA Act of 2011, and it is being taken at a faster pace, with less consultation and with fewer legal safeguards.

If the hill leadership cannot find its voice now, when an airport, a university, a medical college, an international border and the territorial heart of its political identity are walking out of the district in a single move, it will not find that voice later. The carve-out, once gazetted, is unlikely to be reversed. The political claim, once fragmented, will be far harder to reassemble.

Speak now. Or accept that what comes next was decided in your silence.

Writes: Anjani Sharma Bhujel

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The West Bengal election results have been good for the people of Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars region. Maybe for the first time in the Assembly of West Bengal, we will have as many as five representatives. Everyone who desired for the regime change in West Bengal is rejoicing. The reasons for celebrating the results were many and legitimate, from a particular lens but if the larger picture is analysed then probably this result may not lead to the political change that the people have expected. 

The argument I am making is my own, the result of my volition and judgment of the situation. Not everyone may agree with it, but I sincerely hope that the rational and level-headed among us will give it a thought. Irrespective of how many representatives we have, and irrespective of the party in power, the West Bengal Assembly will not favour the creation of Gorkhaland state. 

The demand for the creation of Gorkhaland is based on the ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences we have with the rest of West Bengal. For many in Kolkata Darjeeling is a very important region in their imagination. They consider Darjeeling as an integral part of their legacy and history, which is based on a false understanding of history. It was a part of Nepal and Sikkim, in different periods in history and was ‘gifted’ by the Raja of Sikkim to the erstwhile British rulers. They seem to obliterate this from the history they refer to and create, when discussing the political situation in Darjeeling. I do not blame them for this. They are doing a duty towards their community and politics. The point is, we should also do our duty.

What is our duty then? Our duty is to unite and become one and brainstorm and redesign our demand and put it across the power corridors of Delhi and Kolkata. Can we do this? I do not think so. We cannot do this because there are too many factions and divisions among us. We have become pawns in the hands of the powerful. Darjeeling was so strong, politically, at one point in time because we were united and no leader from Kolkata would dare challenge us. It was also evident from the fact that every political parties trying to contest from Darjeeling would agree to our terms and conditions as alliance partners.

Till now, politiians in Darjeeling have been running around to make material gains, instead of striving for our collective aspirations. But the time for change has come. Now is the time to bury all our hatchets and join our hands in solidarity to fight for the creation of Gorkhaland. If the leaders still think only of themselves and not the cause, then we as Gorkhas will lose our existence and the cause of Gorkhaland will be lost forever.

The change in the politics of West Bengal has created a greater challenge for us. There will be a lot of materialistic development in our region, but there will be no concrete solution to our demand, except that we will become homo economicus-an entrepreneur of ourselves and eminently governable. Therefore, it is time we go back to the slogan that used to vibrate in the hills “Party Bhanda Jati Thulo, Jati Bhanda Mato”.

The public has to show the way, use their agency and force all the leaders to come together once again and move together towards our goal. We as a collective have committed many mistakes, knowingly and unknowingly but it is time that we act by forgetting the past mistakes but learning from it, understanding the present and preparing for the future. It is time that we push the shove together and with conviction for the shake of Gorkhaland.

Jai Gorkhaland!

The post Gorkhas Time to Unite for Gorkhaland is Now appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Gorkha Politicians, if you guys really want to ensure Gorkha welfare – come together and work together. Your unity will strengthen the Gorkha cause – writes Upendra

BJP has won a historic mandate in West Bengal, and they are now in control of the state and the center. Soon they will control all the municipalities and panchayats as well. Having closely observed BJP and how they function, it is more than likely, they will introduce a fiscally liberal, but socially and politically conservative regime.

They will attract and encourage private investments in all sectors, the will build roads, highways, and provide basic infrastructure, even in remotest of places. They will be good for generating employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, and for providing a government that actually works for the people. For a state like West Bengal, which has been governed in a mafia like style with violence, threat intimidation, BJP will provide a welcome alternative.

However, I am worried, that this massive mandate will enable BJP to run the state in a vice-like grip. This may not bode well for ethnic minorities like the Gorkhas. While BJP has said they will ensure Constitutional Solution, but such arrangements may once again fail to meet our expectation. What happens then?

We have a window of six months maximum, in which we can still leverage our collective issues. But divided voices will drown out our demands. Hence, it will be prudent for Gorkhas to come together and unite.

I am writing this as a warning to all Gorkha politicians. You will not be able to save regionalism, or a space for Gorkhas, if you hand-over your autonomy to a national party, just because you cannot keep your ego aside against your own brother and blood. Your divisions has already benefited Bengal. If you continue to divide, we will continue to be governed from Kolkata and Delhi, not Darjeeling.

The only way we can protect our autonomy, and all of your political future as well, is by uniting. Bimal Gurung, Anit Thapa, Ajoy Edwards and Mann Ghising, if you guys really want to ensure Gorkha welfare – come together and work together. Your unity will strengthen the Gorkha cause. Keep your ego aside. Keep old hurts aside. Merge and form a strong united front. Don’t allow yourselves to be used against each other by Kolkata or Delhi anymore.

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My son passed his 10th boards.

Not with the kind of marks that make society erupt into performative applause, but with enough to preserve something infinitely more valuable — his confidence, his dignity, and his belief in himself.

And I keep thinking: What if he hadn’t?

Would a few failed papers have suddenly transformed him into a lesser human being? Less intelligent? Less worthy of love, respect, or a future? What a brutal system — one that convinces children their value can be quantified before they have even discovered who they are.

For months, children are stripped of sleep, joy, and peace in the name of “success.” Homes become factories of anxiety. Parents call it discipline; often, it is fear masquerading as ambition.

An exam can measure memory and performance under pressure. It cannot measure character, resilience, compassion, creativity, emotional depth, or the ability to build a meaningful life.

The world is filled with highly accomplished people who are emotionally bankrupt, and equally filled with ordinary students who became extraordinary human beings. So no, I refuse to believe a marksheet determines destiny. Because long after the percentages are forgotten, a child remembers one thing: whether they were loved as a human being or evaluated as a project. And no academic achievement is worth the slow destruction of a child’s spirit.

My best friend wrote this on her social media page after the ICSE Class X results were declared on Thursday, and it stayed with me long after I finished reading. It wasn’t just moving. It was unsettling in the way truth often is. The kind that lingers quietly, refusing to be brushed aside.

As a mother of a child preparing for her Boards next year, I find myself standing at that familiar crossroads of hope and fear. There is the quiet hope that your child will do well, of course, but alongside it runs a steady current of anxiety, tension, and that ever-present “mummy worry” that never quite switches off. It sits with you at your workplace, your home, follows you into thoughts and conversations, and lingers even in moments that are meant to feel light.

Because Board exams in our country are not just academic milestones anymore. They slowly turn into emotional battlegrounds. Not only for children, but for entire families who begin to measure time, mood, and even self-worth around a set of dates on a calendar.

It often feels like walking a tightrope without a safety net. On one side is encouragement, on the other is pressure – and we are constantly trying to strike a balance without even knowing if we are getting it right. And all around us is noise. A relentless, almost celebratory obsession with “top scorers” flooding social media, newspapers, and television screens. Percentages flash like badges of honour. Toppers are interviewed, analysed, glorified. Success is loudly defined, repeatedly reinforced, and narrowly measured.

But in all this noise, there is a silence that feels almost deliberate.

What about those who didn’t top the charts? Those who fell short of expectations—others’ or their own? What about the average student, the one who tried quietly, consistently, but couldn’t translate effort into numbers? When did effort stop being enough?

And beyond them—what about their parents and guardians, who are navigating their own quiet storms of worry, disappointment, guilt, and helplessness? The ones who replay conversations in their heads, wondering if they pushed too hard—or not enough. The ones who must choose their words carefully, because even a casual remark can either steady a child or shatter what little confidence remains.

What about the friends who don’t know whether to celebrate or console? The classrooms that will reopen with invisible lines drawn between “successful” and “not quite there”? The homes where conversations will either grow softer or heavier?

And most importantly, what about these children themselves…standing at a fragile intersection of self-worth and societal validation, trying to make sense of where they stand in a world that seems to reduce them to a number?

Perhaps the real question we need to ask ourselves is this: when did marks become a measure of a child’s worth, rather than just a reflection of a moment in time?

Because long after the percentages fade and the headlines move on, what remains is far more lasting—the confidence we build, or the doubt we quietly plant.

These are the voices we rarely hear.
And maybe, these are the ones we need to listen to the most.

(Sarikah Atreya is a senior journalist and media personality from Sikkim)

The post Numbers, Noise, and the Quiet Truth appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Chana Ghotala, also widely known as “chana dal ghotala” is causing the flutter in the Darjeeling region. There are allegations that nearly 14000 Metric Tonne of Chana/Dal allocated to the GTA has gone missing

We have with us a set of official documents, shared with us by IGJF leaders. We have compiled these documents into a timeline, along with supporting letters and email correspondence.

Together, these indicate a sequence of rapid and potentially irregular administrative actions by the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), Darjeeling, in relation to the requisitioning, processing, allocation and distribution of Chana (Bengal Gram) under the Government of India’s Bharat Dal scheme.

The Bharat Dal initiative aims to supply pulses at subsidized rates through cooperatives like the National Consumer Cooperative Federation of India Ltd. (NCCF) and NAFED to stabilize retail prices and meet dietary needs. However, the GTA’s implementation appears to have involved the swift appointment of an advisor, an immediate large-scale requisition, appointment of a private Kanpur-based firm as “Nodal Agency” without visible tender process, a substantial advance payment by that firm, and subsequent justifications amid apparent objections from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. The advisor, one Sanju Chettri later resigned in April 2025.

Chronological Timeline of Key Events

4 March 2024 – Appointment of Advisor

• GTA Notification (Order No. 1/EM/GTA/2024) appoints Sanju Chhetri as Advisor for Land & Land Reform, Agriculture, and Sericulture departments.
• The order is formally issued and signed by the Executive Member, in-charge of Agriculture, Land and Land Reforms and Sericulture, GTA and is widely circulated within GTA, taking immediate effect.

5 March 2024 – Requisition for 47,500 MT Chana (Ref AGRI/Bharat Dal/2023-24/01)

• A letter to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs requests 47,500 MT of Chana under the Bharat Dal scheme. Signed by Sanju Chhetri (on behalf of the Executive Member), the request follows just one day after his appointment.

8 April 2024 – Letter from Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution PS-03001/1/2023-PMC Pt-3 (E-32596)

• Ministry advises the National Consumer Cooperative Federation of India Ltd. (NCCF) may coordinate with GTA for supply of 14,000 MT Chana/Dal under Bharat Dal mechanism.
• Note the proposed allocation has been reduced to 14,000 MT which is significantly lower than requested 47500 MT.

9 July 2024 – Appointment of Private Firm (with no ref number)

• A letter signed by the Advisor Sanju Chettri appoints M/s Jeevshakti Products Pvt Ltd Ltd (CIN U74999UP2018PTC101881) as “Nodal Agency” for lifting, processing, packaging, and distribution.

Notable concerns:

• There’s no evidence of a tender or competitive selection process involved in the apppointment of this firm
• The letter has been issued on limited-circulation letterhead
• There seems to have been a minimal internal dissemination within GTA, but the Executive Member Agri, L&LRs Seri is kept in the loop

4 October 2024 – GTA Justification to Ministry Ref: DoAFW/GTA/07

• In the letter written by Sanju Chettri on GTA letter-head, he defends the arrangement of appointing a private firm, describing the firm as a “Nodal and Implementing Agency” rather than a private vendor.
• It cites lack of infrastructure in GTA, and requests phased release of stock.
• The response appears to follow queries or objections from central authorities.
• Letter claims, “JeevShakti Products Private Limited has made an upfront payment of Rs 2.26 crores on the 17th of September 2024, under UTR: ICICR52024091700423187, to NAFED’s A/c No: 110144034290 in Canara Bank.”

11 April 2025 – Resignation of Advisor

• Sanju Chhetri resigns via email, effective immediately.

Key Issues

1. Appointment and Role of the Advisor

• The documents confirm formal appointment but provide no information on qualifications, selection process, or scope of authority.
• Within one day, the advisor was involved in a major procurement request, raising questions about preparedness and mandate.

2. Unusually Rapid Requisition

• The requisition for 47,500 MT immediately the day after appointment, suggests either prior informal planning or an expedited decision-making process without documented internal consultation.

3. Appointment of Nodal Agency Without Visible Tender

• No records indicate a competitive bidding or tender process for selecting the private firm.
• The limited circulation of the appointment order further raises transparency concerns.

4. Unclear Contractual Terms

• No contract, agreement, or financial terms are included in the available documents.
• Critical details, such as commission, liability, risk-sharing, remain undocumented in the public record.

5. Advance Payment Structure

• The private firm deposited ₹2.25 crore directly with NAFED.
• The rationale, authorization, and proision for this arrangement are not clearly explained.

6. Lack of Outcome Transparency

There is no documentary evidence confirming:

• whether the allocated Chana was actually lifted,
• processed into dal,
• distributed to beneficiaries, or
• deposit to NAFED refunded if unused.

As of April 2026, the final status of the allocation remains unclear.

Outstanding Questions

• The documents establish a consistent sequence of events but also highlight significant gaps in transparency, documentation, and procedural clarity.

The “Daal Ghotala” allegations center on whether public resources and central scheme benefits were handled with due process or channeled through opaque, ad-hoc arrangements.

• possible bypassing of procurement norms,
• concentration of decision-making authority in a single appointed advisor,
• limited institutional oversight, and
• absence of verifiable outcomes for a public welfare scheme

To fully resolve these issues, formal clarification would be required from:

• GTA leadership, including the Chief Executive, Principal Secretary, and Executive Member in-charge of Agriculture, Land and Sericulture
• Sanju Chhetri, the advisor
• M/s Jeevshakti Products Pvt Ltd,
• Relevant central agencies (Ministry of Consumer Affairs, NAFED, NCCF)

Until such disclosures are made, the matter remains one of documented procedural concern rather than conclusively established wrongdoing.

We have reached out to all concerned, we are awaiting their response, and will post the same, as and when they respond.

LIST OF DOCUMENTS WE HAVE TILL NOW

The post “Chana Ghotala”? Irregularities in Gorkhaland Territorial Administration’s Handling of Bharat Dal Scheme (Chana Allocation) appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.