Senior CPM leader K.B. Wattar had his water and cable TV connections snapped in 2008 by his political rivals. In 1997, another rival party announced that any person coming to meet him would have to pay a fine of Rs 2,000 and anyone seen talking to Wattar would be fined Rs 500.

In 1986, when the Gorkhaland agitation was at its peak, “social boycott” was common to the extent that villagers received diktats to not even attend funerals of political rivals.

A purported attempt to bring back the practice in Darjeeling recently was vehemently opposed in the hills and apparently nipped in the bud.

On April 15 workers of Kanchan View tea garden and members of a village social organisation, Gaon Sudhar Sammelan (GSS), started a hunger strike in Darjeeling to raise worker-related demands. Ajoy Edwards, president of Hamro Party, and his wife Namrata started an indefinite hunger strike, which lifted four days later when the district magistrate intervened.

However, on the first day of the agitation, 15 of 99 tea garden workers joined their duties going against the majority of their colleagues.

As the agitation intensified, posters appeared stating that workers who joined their duties would be “socially boycotted.”

In the past, a simple poster would have been enough for a social boycott. This time, many political parties spoke out against it. A member of the GSS clarified workers would not be socially boycotted but their names would be struck off the GSS membership.

A couple of days back, worker Nirmal Rana, who had worked on April 15, posted a poignant video on social media.

“I heard we were being socially boycotted and later we started hearing that our membership would be terminated. I will be hurt if my membership is terminated from such an old organisation. What crime have I committed to deserve this?” he said.

On why he chose to work when most of his colleagues were agitating, Rana added: “I was facing hardship. I did not even have money to buy bidi. Come and visit my place to understand my condition, the food I eat and the way I live.”

Jiten Rai, the chief adviser of the GSS, told The Telegraph that the association had no such plans. “There was much tension during that period and some people might have made such remarks in the heat of the moment,” said Rai, who added that the GSS had not issued any “official letter” on social boycott or membership termination.

The GSS was formed in 1948 and 356 families are members of this powerful social organisation.

A senior police officer said a case had been started against the GSS members for the initial social boycott call.

Many political observers believe that the presence of several parties in the hills nowadays probably thwarted the re-emergence of social boycott. “Had a single party dominated the political ecosystem here, the social boycott call might have worked,” said an observer.

Wattar, who won the DGHC election in 1988 from Bijanbari-Pulbazar, recollected: “In 1997, I was socially boycotted as I joined another political party. In 2008, members of the rival political party would sit in front of my house and maintain a visitors’ book to note details about the people who came to meet me.”