Gorkhaland Territorial Administration will be gone if BJP forms government: Raju Bista
Telegraph | 3 April 2026
The BJP, if voted to power in Bengal, will invalidate the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) on the very first day of the government, Raju Bista, the Darjeeling BJP MP, asserted on Thursday.
Bista was addressing supporters at the Kurseong Motor Stand while accompanying Sonam Lama, the BJP candidate for the Kurseong Assembly seat, to file his nomination papers.
Bista said that three specific decisions would be taken by the BJP government on the very first day if voted to power.
“We will take three specific decisions on May 5 — the day we form the government. First and foremost, we will invalidate the GTA,” said Bista, who is also a national spokesman of the party.
“The GTA is not a solution for the people of the Darjeeling hills, the Terai and the Dooars. It is only a problem,” said Bista.
The two other decisions promised by Bista were two separate commissions to investigate corruption in the GTA from 2017 to 2026 and another commission to look into the details of GTA properties being leased out to private parties.
The GTA was formed in 2012 following an agreement among the UPA in the Centre, the Trinamool Congress-led state government and Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
Gurung is supporting the BJP in this election. In the 2021 elections, he had supported Trinamool.
The GTA had replaced another administrative body, the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, which was agreed by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) in 1988. The GNLF is also an ally of the BJP, but this time its leader, Neeraj Zimba, was denied a ticket from Darjeeling.
“The GTA is not a solution for the people of the Darjeeling hills, the Terai and the Dooars. It is only a problem,” said Bista.
The GTA is currently a major development agency in the hills and gives a lot of leverage to the party that controls this body. Anit Thapa’s Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha, an ally of Trinamool in the hills, currently controls the GTA.
Since 2019, the BJP, during its Lok Sabha election campaign, has been promising a permanent political solution for the region without defining what it is. However, most in the hills want it to be the Gorkhaland state.
New states are created in Parliament and not state Assemblies.
On Thursday, Bista also said that if the BJP comes to power in Bengal, a permanent political solution would be worked out for the region “within six months”.
On February 25, 2022, on the last day of campaigning for Darjeeling municipality election, Bista said he would quit politics if the Centre failed to provide justice to the people of Darjeeling, the Terai and the Dooars by 2024.
“I am speaking on record. If the people of Darjeeling, the Terai and the Dooars do not get justice (within 2024), Raju Bista will resign from politics and will not contest any elections in the future,” he said.
The BJP-led Centre has not yet fulfilled its promise of a permanent political solution for the region and tribal status to 11 Gorkha communities. Bista, however, contested the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat for the second time in 2024 and won.