BJP’s Assembly election campaign for the Darjeeling hills will start from Kurseong on Sunday, and the party reaffirmed on Friday that it would fight the polls in alliance with the old allies in the region.
Actor Mithun Chakraborty will attend the Kurseong meeting.
Raju Bista, the Darjeeling MP of the BJP, said: “Our campaign in the hills for the Bengal Assembly elections will start from Kurseong this Sunday. Senior leaders have been given clusters to look after and organise rallies.”
Bista will mostly take part in public meetings in the Dooars, starting from Malbazar on January 5.
On January 6, the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, will address a public meeting in Siliguri.
Bista will cover Kalchini in the Dooars on January 12, followed by meetings at Nagarkata and Madarihat on January 13.
Even though the BJP is holding a public meeting on its own in Kurseong, Bista said the party would contest the elections in the hills in alliance with its traditional allies.
“Since this is a statewide programme of the BJP, we are organising the public meeting under the party banner in Kurseong. However, we will fight the elections with our allies in the hills and organise joint public meetings,” said Bista.
The BJP had won the Darjeeling and Kurseong Assembly seats in 2021, while the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha, an ally of the Trinamool Congress, had emerged victorious in Kalimpong.
In Darjeeling, Neeraj Zimba, the general secretary of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), had won the seat on a BJP ticket, a repeat of his success in the 2019 Darjeeling Assembly byelection.
The BJP is in alliance with six parties in the hills, including the GNLF and Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.