Binay Tamang on Thursday said he and Bimal Gurung would work from “different platforms” on various issues for the benefit of Gorkhas by “taking the state government into confidence”.

Tamang added a new dimension to the ever-changing political landscape in the Darjeeling hills when he called on Gurung for a one-on-one meeting on Wednesday evening.

“We have decided to work from different platforms to raise the issues of the Gorkha community by taking the state government into confidence,” Tamang told this newspaper on Thursday.

There were rumours in the hills about the possibility of Tamang joining Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha but the former ruled it out “at the moment”.

Speaking at a different location in Darjeeling on Thursday, Gurung also said he and Tamang would work from different platforms, but he was quick to add that “anything can happen” in politics.

The two leaders’ statements clearly indicated that while both of them had agreed to work from different platforms at the moment, they remained open to the idea of different political permutations and combinations, which some observers think will add to the element of uncertainty in the hills.

In the middle of the 2017 Gorkhaland agitation, Tamang fell apart with Gurung and formed his own faction in the Morcha. Since then, Gurung had been on the run as several cases had been slapped on him in connection with the violent movement.

The political equations in the hills started to change after Gurung dumped the BJP and allied with the Trinamul Congress last year. Tamang’s meeting with Gurung on Wednesday comes after the former quit his own faction in the Morcha on July 15.

Anit Thapa is now heading the Morcha faction that Tamang headed.

Observers believe that though Gurung, Tamang and Thapa are all allies of Trinamul, Gurung and Tamang have joined hands to take on Thapa.

The Thapa camp said the new development would only help their faction. “It has exposed Tamang and let us see how other leaders in the camps of Gurung and Tamang react to this development. We have nothing to lose from yesterday’s development,” said a leader from the Thapa camp.

Speaking to The Telegraph over the phone from Kalimpong, Thapa said he would announce the date of the launch of his new party at a meeting to be held on August 17.

Sources close to him had earlier told this newspaper that Thapa would launch the new party “either in the last week of August or the first week of September”.

Thapa was in Kalimpong on Thursday where a former GTA Sabha member Gopal Ruchal joined his faction while Tamang started a tour of the foothills of Kalimpong and the Dooars.