The Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM) headed by Anit Thapa managed to get on board around 400 supporters from two other hill parties on Thursday.

At a public meeting in Simulbari, around 20km from Siliguri under Kurseong subdivision, Thapa and other party leaders inducted members who were so far with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and the GNLF.

“Our party is gaining popularity across the hills as we never tried to use people for elections. They have seen that in the past few months, we have worked in a planned manner for comprehensive development of the hills,” said Thapa, also the chief executive of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).

He said that the GTA was working in close contact with the state government and had succeeded in convincing the state to conduct panchayat elections in the hills. Rural polls in the hills were last held in 2000.

“Gradually, we will implement several infrastructure projects in this region,” said Thapa.

The BGPM leadership, who abstained from a recent national-level seminar on Gorkhaland hosted by the Morcha, also took a dig at Bimal Gurung who was stressing the need for a national-level forum to push the longstanding demand for statehood.

“Gorkhaland can be achieved only through talks and not seminars,” said a party leader.

Simulbari, which comes under Sukna-Panighata constituency of the GTA, was known to be a GNLF bastion.

“Over the past few months, there were certain defections. After today’s joining, it is evident that the BGPM has an edge when the rural polls are ahead,” said a local resident.

Thapa’s party, which secured a majority in the GTA polls held earlier this year, is trying to spread its wings.

In recent weeks, it got six councillors of Hamro Party on board and staked claim to Darjeeling municipality.