The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s renewed demand to include 396 mouzas from the Dooars and Terai in a proposed constitutional body has reopened one of north Bengal’s most difficult questions: where should the region’s political and administrative boundaries lie? Raised at the party’s 20th foundation day celebration in Darjeeling, the demand extends beyond the hill areas traditionally covered by the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.
The immediate announcement came from Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri, who said the party had submitted a list of the 396 mouzas to the state government. He argued that the issue fell within the state’s domain and appealed to chief minister Suvendu Adhikari to include the plains areas in the territorial demand. The chief minister had been scheduled to attend the Darjeeling event but cancelled the visit on the previous evening to attend an event marking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 25 years in administration, according to the report by Telegraph India.
The demand matters because it is not simply a request to redraw an administrative map. It seeks to bring areas with different demographic and political profiles into a proposed arrangement intended to address the concerns of Gorkhas, Adivasis and Rajbanshis. The Dooars and Terai are mixed-population regions, unlike the hill areas of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, which have a predominantly Gorkha population. Any future territorial institution covering these plains areas would therefore have to manage a more complex representation question than the existing hill-focused arrangements.
The Morcha has presented the proposal as part of a wider constitutional solution. Giri said a committee headed by interlocutor Pankaj Kumar Singh, a former deputy national security adviser and retired IPS officer, had been formed. According to him, the Centre would grant a constitutional body for the Gorkhas, Adivasis and Rajbanshis after the committee submits its report. The source report does not provide the committee’s terms of reference, its timeline or the precise powers being considered for the proposed body.
That lack of detail is important. A territorial institution is defined not only by the number of areas included within it but also by its legislative, executive and financial powers. The supplied account establishes that the Morcha wants 396 mouzas included, but it does not establish how such an institution would divide responsibilities with the state government, local administrations or existing bodies. Nor does it set out how representation would be allocated among the different communities living in the plains and hills.
The present demand also revives an unresolved issue from the agreement that created the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. After the Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011, the GTA agreement provided for a committee to examine the Morcha’s demand for including 396 mouzas from the Terai and Dooars. A committee headed by retired Justice Shyamal Sen subsequently recommended the inclusion of only five of the 396 mouzas in the GTA. The difference between the original demand and that recommendation has remained a central fault line in the region’s territorial politics.
The earlier history shows why the number 396 carries significance beyond its administrative description. For the Morcha, the list represents the geographical reach it believes should be considered in a political settlement. For the state, the question involves the consequences of including plains areas with a mixed population and distinct local identities. The earlier recommendation of five mouzas indicates that the state-level examination did not accept the full territorial claim under the arrangement then being negotiated.
The demand also places pressure on the promise of a “permanent political solution” made by the BJP in its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto for the people of Darjeeling, the Dooars and the Terai. The source report does not state the exact design of that promised solution or whether the present committee is intended to fulfil the manifesto commitment. But the Morcha’s renewed intervention shows that the geographical scope of any settlement remains contested, even as the idea of a constitutional body is being discussed.
The institutional chain is spread across different levels of government. The Morcha has submitted the mouza list to the state government and says the state must address the territorial question. At the same time, Giri has described a Centre-backed process involving an interlocutor and a proposed constitutional body. This creates a dual administrative pathway: the state is expected to respond to the boundary demand, while the Centre is associated with the broader constitutional framework.
That division of responsibility can make implementation more difficult. A constitutional arrangement would require clarity on the relationship between the Union government, the state government and the proposed regional institution. The source material does not specify whether the committee’s eventual recommendations would be binding, whether Parliament or the state legislature would need to approve them, or how local governments in the affected mouzas would be incorporated. These unanswered questions are not procedural details; they determine how authority would operate on the ground.
The territorial dispute is also connected to the region’s political history. The erstwhile Left Front government opposed the inclusion of areas from the plains. The GTA agreement later created a formal mechanism to examine the demand, but the recommendation to include only five mouzas did not resolve the Morcha’s claim. The political positions of the party’s leaders have since changed. Bimal Gurung, who addressed the foundation day gathering, said he was no longer the Bimal Gurung of 2017 and wanted peace in the region.
That statement places the current demand against the memory of the 2017 Gorkhaland agitation, during which violent protests took place and Gurung and Giri went underground. Gurung resurfaced in 2020 and briefly backed the Trinamool Congress during the 2021 Bengal Assembly elections. He is currently described in the report as an ally of the BJP, while the Morcha has supported the BJP in Lok Sabha elections since 2009. The changing alliances show how the territorial issue has remained politically active across different electoral phases.
Yet a stated preference for peace does not remove the underlying governance challenge. The question is whether a new institution can provide political recognition without creating a new contest over boundaries, representation and administrative control. The 396-mouza demand makes that challenge sharper because it seeks to extend the proposed arrangement into regions where the population is more mixed and where the political meaning of inclusion may differ from that in the hills.
The available evidence does not establish whether the state government accepts the list, whether other community or local bodies support it, or what position the committee will take. It also does not provide population figures for the 396 mouzas, details of their existing administrative jurisdictions or the financial framework for the proposed constitutional body. Those gaps limit what can presently be concluded about the practical effects of the demand.
What is clear is that the territorial question has moved back to the centre of negotiations over north Bengal’s political future. The Morcha has formally restated its claim, linked it to a Centre-associated committee and asked the state government to act. The next decisive stage will be the committee’s report and the response of the state and Union governments to the proposed inclusion of the 396 mouzas. Until those steps clarify the institution’s boundaries and powers, the territorial settlement remains unresolved.
