The Centre has scheduled the next round of the tripartite meeting to discuss issues related to the Gorkhas in New Delhi on April 2, after a gap of four years.

“Today (Wednesday), we received an invitation from the Union ministry of home affairs to attend the second round of tripartite talks involving the central government, all stakeholders from our Darjeeling hills, the Terai and the Dooars region, and the West Bengal government,” said Raju Bista, the Darjeeling BJP MP.

Bista had been pushing for the talks with Union home minister Amit Shah for a while.

Sources said that the Bengal chief secretary along with the registrar general of India and senior official of the Union tribal ministry, among others, have been invited to the talks to be held at the North Block at 11am.

One of the “issues” of Darjeeling is the demand for granting tribal status to 11 hill communities apart from finding a “permanent political solution.”

Sources said that Nityanand Rai, the minister of state (home affairs) is likely to chair the meeting.

The Centre had last convened a meeting to discuss Darjeeling-related issues on October 12, 2021, with a promise to hold another one in November that same year.

While the BJP supporters are optimistic about the meeting, the BJP-led Centre’s track record on the outcome of these meetings has not been very encouraging.

On September 26, 2017, Bimal Gurung, president of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, called off the 104-day strike in Darjeeling after then Union home minister Rajnath Singh promised to convene a tripartite meeting within a “fortnight”. The promised meeting was never called during Singh’s tenure which ended in 2019.

Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP again promised a permanent political solution (PPS), which many people in the hills interpret as the state of Gorkhaland, and tribal status to 11 communities.

The Centre convened a meeting on August 7, 2020, but changed the agenda from “issues related to Gorkhaland to issues related to the GTA”. With BJP allies in the hills refusing to attend the meeting for a GTA agenda, the meeting was cancelled.

A meeting was finally held on October 7, 2020, with only Bimal Gurung’s party attending the meeting.

The next tripartite meeting, which was chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah was last held on October 12, 2021 on “issues related to the Gorkhas”. A PIB release after the meeting stated that Shah “has decided to call for the second round of talks in the presence of the senior officials of Government of West Bengal in November 2021”, but that was not held.