Four senior leaders of the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (Binoy Tamang camp) in Kalimpong resigned from the party today. They cited reasons like lack of discipline in the party and “autocratic decisions.” They also came down heavily on the recently-elected Morcha’s (Tamang camp) Kalimpong MLA Ruden Sada Lepcha and accused him of victimising people living in areas where he could not secure good votes.

“There is no proper system in the party, which is not functioning properly, while it has no discipline. These problems are being seen for the past one year and we had taken it up with our party, but nothing has been done about it. They are only giving importance to people who are there for their personal gain.

These were some of the reasons why we decided to resign,” said Bhuwan Khanal, who was a central committee member of the party.

Along with Mr Khanal, those who left the party today included central committee leaders Norden Lama and Praveen Rahapal, and Kalimpong district committee office secretary Saran Pradhan. “Fascist decisions are taken without any consultation and meetings. There is monopoly of some people in the party. We had joined the party in 2017, seeing the way they were working. A good atmosphere had also been created but that has changed over this past one year,” Mr Khanal said.

He criticised Kalimpong MLA Mr Lepcha for making a statement after he won the elections that priority for development work would be given only to booths from where he had won votes. “He is victimising the people in booths that he lost from by directing GTA officials not to work in those areas. This is wrong and we condemn it and request the officials to work for the people in these areas too,” said Mr Khanal, adding that the recent decision to dissolve some committees of the party in Kalimpong was done without any discussion.

Adding to that, Mr Rahapal said, “Around Rs 700 crore had come for development work here, but work of not even 7 crore has been done in Kalimpong. Also, there was around Rs 30 crore the party had raised in funds, but no one knows where that went.” On the Kalimpong MLA, he said, “There is another office of the party at Relli with the party here becoming Ruden and company.”

Morcha leader Mr Tamang, on the other hand, said, “We have only come to know about their resignation from news portals and Mr Khanal has sent me a small message of him resigning personally. Since we have not received anything officially, we have not decided anything on the matter.”