Darjeeling votes tomorrow: 10 facts about this strategically important Lok Sabha seat in North Bengal

The Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in North Bengal will vote in the second phase on Friday. Balurghat and Raiganj are two other seats going to polls on the same day in West Bengal. The polling for Darjeeling, Balurghat, and Raiganj will decide the electoral fate of two sitting BJP MPs, including BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar. Majumdar is up against veteran TMC leader and Minister Biplab Mitra. 

1. Bordering Nepal, the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat houses the strategically important Chicken’s Neck or Siliguri corridor connecting the northeastern states with mainland India. 
2. Darjeeling, often referred to as the queen of the hills and known for its tea, timber and tourism industries, is up for a four-cornered contest. 
3. Sitting BJP MP Raju Bista is contesting against party MLA from Kurseong, Bishnu Prasad Sharma, who is running as an independent after his demand to field a "Bhumiputra" was not accepted by the BJP. 
4. Raju Bista has the backing of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and the Bimal Gurung faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Bista is an exception who has been repeated as the BJP candidate from the hills. 
5. The BJP has won the seat three times but has never repeated its candidate in Darjeeling. BJP's previous MPs Jaswant Singh and S S Ahluwalia in 2009 and 2014 had only a single tenure.
6. Raju Bista is up against formidable opposition as Congress, which has joined hands with the Hamro Party, has fielded Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh's Munish Tamang, who is also supported by the CPI (M). 
7. The TMC has fielded Gopal Lama, supported by Anit Thapa's Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM), which controls the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA). 
8. The Darjeeling hills are going for another election as the long-pending demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland gains focus, with electoral fortunes hinging on promises of a political solution to the demand. 
9. The BJP has promised a permanent solution within the next five years. The Bimal Gurung-led Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), which switched alliances from the TMC, issued a 'final ultimatum' to the saffron camp, demanding a resolution to the hill problem as a pre-condition for their support in the elections. 
10. In the 2021 assembly polls, the BJP had bagged six seats whereas the TMC had bagged just one in the Lok Sabha constituency. (With inputs from PTI)