In a major shift in their poll strategy, the Binay Tamang camp of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has decided against holding mega rallies during their Assembly election campaign and instead concentrate on booth-level meetings.

During the 2019 Darjeeling Assembly bypoll and Lok Sabha elections, the Tamang camp had concentrated on major rallies in an effort to show their strength, which they felt would send a positive image to the voters, but this had not yielded results. BJP’s Raju Bista defeated Trinamul’s Amar Singh Rai, which the Morcha had backed, by a margin of 4.13 lakh votes. Tamang lost the Darjeeling Assembly bypoll to BJP-GNLF candidate Neeraj Zimba by more than 46,000 votes.

“We will not hold any major rallies this time. We realised that attendance in rallies tend to be misleading and that does not translate into votes,” said a senior Morcha leader of the Tamang camp.

The only major rally that this faction has lined up is while announcing their candidates, which is likely to be done in a week’s time.

“Even that rally will not be not be big. We are looking at bringing only 10 vehicles from each constituency,” the leader said.

There are 45 Gorkhaland Territorial Administration constituencies in the hills.

Instead of rallies, the Morcha will concentrate on holding booth-level meetings.

“We will hold small booth-level meetings this time around. We want to reach out to voters on a personal level,” the leader said.

Tamang faction leaders maintain that apart from booth-level meetings the party would also focus on smart social media campaigns. “No party can afford to neglect social media campaigns nowadays. We have already set up our social media team specifically for this election,” a Morcha insider said.

The Bengal Assembly election has gained prominence in Darjeeling hills, unlike previous years, because of the recent change in the political contours of the hills.

With the hills electing only three legislators to the Bengal house of 294, the state polls were considered a routine exercise which would be swept by the party in power in the hills, which basically meant the GTA or Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council prior to 2012.

However, this time around the election is seen as a platform for three major hill parties, GNLF, the GJM (Bimal Gurung faction) and GJM (Binay Tamang faction) to prove their mandate. Both the Morcha factions are allies of Trinamul but bitter rivals of each other.

“This time no one knows which party has the mandate. The results would bear testimony to whether the decade old party (Gorkha Janmukti Morcha) is still acceptable in the hills,” said Amar Lama, a lawyer, speaking as an independent observer.

The Binay Tamang faction of the Morcha admitted the importance of the results of the three hill seats. “In the past, Assembly elections were not taken seriously by hill parties but this time it is important as we have shown that it is necessary for the hills to work with the government in power at Calcutta,” said spokesman Keshav Raj Pokhrel.