The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), in the midst of an agitation for a separate Gorkhaland State in Darjeeling, said it would continue to hold the BJP accountable to its manifesto for the 2014 elections where the party promised to “sympathetically examine and appropriately consider the long-pending demands of Gorkhas.”
The GJM central committee member, Swaraj Thapa, told The Hindu that BJP general secretary Kailash Vijaywargiya’s flat statement that his party was not in favour of a separate Gorkhaland State did not hold water. “We are going by the BJP’s manifesto where it promised to sympathetically consider the demands for a separate State, and there is nothing yet to indicate that the party has gone back on its manifesto promise,” he said.
“Mr. Vijaywargiya is the general secretary of the BJP in charge of West Bengal and therefore his views may reflect that of the West Bengal State unit. That is a matter for the BJP to sort out within itself. We haven’t heard anything from the central BJP, neither party president Amit Shah nor Prime Minister Narendra Modi on such a categorical ruling out of a separate State. In fact in 2014, PM Modi had declared that “ jo Gorkhaon ka sapna hai, wahi mera sapna hai [I share the dream of the Gorkhas] when he visited Darjeeling,” said Mr. Thapa.
