Darjeeling, April 14: Nineteen years after falling apart, the two most powerful employees’ associations in the hills have decided to come together to start a joint movement for statehood.

The development follows an initiative taken by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. The leaders of the two factions of the Hill Employees’ Association (HEA) — the NB Singh Road and the Eden Dham — have agreed to a joint forum for the movement.

Amar Rai, the president of HEA (Eden Dham), said: “We have decided to come together for the statehood agitation. However, both the associations will stick to their own programmes on employee interest related issues.”

This means that for the moment none of the two associations, once known to be at loggerheads with each other, will be dissolved.

While NB Singh Road has been registered under the Societies Registration Act, the Eden Dham faction was registered as Hill Employees and Workers’ Trade Union under the Trade Union Act in 1995. Amar Rai and his supporters had walked out of the parent body in 1989 after there were differences of opinion. The breakaway group came to be known commonly as the Eden Dham faction.

The combined membership of the two associations is almost 10,000. In the past, government employees affiliated to one of the two organisations usually refused to participate in any agitation programme called by the other.

B.P. Chhetri, general secretary of NB Singh Road and the co-ordinator for the formation of the joint forum, said the two units would meet soon to discuss the composition of the new body.

“We will have equal representations from both the organisations apart from three central committee members from the Morcha. If things go well there is possibility of the associations merging in future,” said Chhetri.