Siliguri, April 1: Come April, and Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) chief Subash Ghisingh can be expected to spring a surprise or two.

As May 10 approaches, all eyes remain fixed on the GNLF leader who has so far remained quiet on his party’s intentions with regard to the crucial Darjeeling constituency.

Barring the GNLF, the Congress, CPM and BJP have announced their candidates.

The Congress and the BJP are both allies in the People’s Democratic Front, a five-party coalition of anti-GNLF parties which also has the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL), Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists and GNLF (C) as its partners.

With the GNLF boycotting three successive general elections, a move that helped the CPM win the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat without any difficulty, there is intense speculation that Ghisingh will try to pull out of the poll even this year.

The Opposition, which slammed the earlier vote-boycotts as a well-crafted strategy devised by the ruling CPM and the GNLF, has threatened to lodge a complaint with the Election Commission and also demand de-recognition of the party if the GNLF decides to stay away from this election.

“This time Ghisingh cannot boycott the polls directly. It would attract the Election Commission’s ire and the GNLF might even face de-recognition. He will either have to put up a candidate or come clean on his party’s support to the CPM,” said Darjeeling Lok Shaba Congress candidate and former Congress legislator Dawa Narbula.

Brushing aside allegations over its “tacit understanding” with the CPM, senior GNLF leaders from Darjeeling said: “Our chairman is not shaky as the PDF leadership. He holds all his aces close to his chest and will reveal them once every party has fielded their respective candidates.”

“We need only a fraction of the votes from the plains to win but the entire matter rests on the chairman,” said GNLF Darjeeling unit chief Deepak Gurung.

Spring has played an important role in the soldier-turned-novelist-turned-politician’s career.

It was in April 1986 that Ghisingh chose to launch the violent Gorkhaland agitation.

It was the same season during which he launched his major programmes and also called for boycott of the 1987 Assembly elections in the three hill subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong.

The closure of the hill council in 1992 also came in spring.