The Trinamul Congress’s candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, Gopal Lama, started the election campaign in the Naxalbari block of the Siliguri subdivision from Hatighisa panchayat to prove the “hollow promises” of the Narendra Modi government.

In 2014, the then BJP MP of Darjeeling, S.S. Ahluwalia, announced the adoption of Hatighisa under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna (SAGY) to develop it into a model village.

The reason for such a decision, he said, is because Kanu Sanyal, a veteran Naxalite and a front-liner of the famous Naxalbari Movement which had initiated here in the late sixties, used to live in Sebdellajote, which is in Hatighisa, located around 25 kilometres from here.

“In Naxalbari block, we launched the election campaign of our candidate from Hatighisa to prove that BJP only makes empty promises. The MP had assured that he would develop Hatighisa as a model village under SAGY but nothing happened. In fact, we have carried out certain infrastructural development here in the past couple of years,” said Arun Ghosh, sabhadhipati of the Trinamul-run Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad.

According to party insiders, Trinamul is putting impetus on Naxalbari, which is a part of the Matigara-Naxalbari Assembly segment of the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, as they were lagging behind BJP by a huge margin, both in the 2019 Parliament elections and in the Assembly elections of 2021.

In 2019, Raju Bista, the departing MP, had secured a margin of over one lakh votes over the Trinamul candidate from this segment, which is one of the four Assembly segments in the plains in the Darjeeling seat. The remaining three segments are in the hills.

Also, in the 2021 Assembly polls, Anandamoy Barman, the BJP candidate, had won the seat with a margin of around 70,000 votes.

“We are specifically focusing on this seat as in other Assembly segments the margin is not so high. People should know that it is not the MP but the state government which took the task to extend drinking water to around 1,000 households of Hatighisa for the first time,” Ghosh added.

Other projects including roads and bridges have also been taken up in the area, he claimed.

In the course of the campaign, Trinamul will also highlight the slew of social welfare schemes implemented across the block in rural areas of the Siliguri subdivision (there are four blocks).

“Kanu Sanyal (who died in 2010), would always emphasise the socio-economic welfare of people and the BJP MPs, who have won thrice in Darjeeling seat, did little for them. They couldn’t even develop one area as a model village. The political equations are different this time and people will stand by us,” said Alok Chakraborty, the chairman of Darjeeling (plains) district Trinamul.

Today, Lama, along with party leaders, held an indoor meeting in Hatighisa.

“Our candidate is literally a son of the soil and not someone like the BJP MPs who were planted by the party here with empty promises. we are determined to give him a lead in votes from the plains,” the Trinamul leader added.