Raju Bista, a 33-year-old from Manipur’s Kangpoki district, is the new MP from Darjeeling.

It took many by surprise when the BJP fielded Raju Bista in Darjeeling. The leaders of the  party were smart enough to find a young Gorkha RSS worker from Manipur to represent them in the politically hostile hills district of West Bengal.

Raju was fielded because political forces like the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha and the Gorkha National Liberation Front were not happy with the performance of veteran BJP leader Surinderjeet Singh Ahluwalia as their MP.

Unable to find a local Gorkha to represent BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in the Darjeeling hills, Raju Bista was more like a wild-card entry.

In fact, Raju was a BJP candidate suggested by the RSS. He is an RSS worker and had joined Sangh pariwar in 1998.

Though his political opponents initially mocked him as an “outsider”, Raju Bista defeated Amar Singh Rai of the TMC by a huge margin.

Before joining active politics, Raju was the managing director of an MNC, the Surya Roshni Limited.

A keen believer in Narendra Modi’s ‘Adarsh Gram Yojna’, Bista is a social worker, and had taken up a series of development works for the uplift of several tribal villages in Chattisgarh.

Born and brought up in Manipur’s Kangpokh district, young entrepreneur Bista is an ‘unlikely’ candidate of the saffron party.

His opponents have called this political greenhorn an ‘outsider’ to Gorkha dominated Darjeeling.

In response to which, Bista said that he was “the son of a Gorkha” and he would never betray them.

“I will assure that no Gorkha will have to lower his head because of me,” he said.

BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya says it is Bista’s “extensive background in social work” that prompted the party to choose him.

Much before he became an MD of the electrical giant, Bista joined an NGO and was proactively involved in various development projects in Darjeeling.

From founding clubs in Darjeeling (Bharat Youth Club) to promote sports amongst the youths of the hill station to organizing personality development events for school children to giving grants to Sanskrit schools, Bista has made innumerable contributions for the uplift of the people in the area.

One can tell from Bista’s work that he is naturally inclined to the Sangh Parivar beliefs and has a nationalist mindset, providing grants for various schools run by the RSS as well as economically helping Sanskrit schools in Manipur.

Bista, although is closely associated with Darjeeling on a personal level, his candidature by BJP, who enjoys support and alliance from Darjeeling’s two most powerful groups – Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) and Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF),  created dissent amongst the Gorkha population of the district.

The strife over Bista’s candidature even lead to a rift amongst GJM leaders which was propelled by senior GJM leader Swaraj Thapa quitting the party in protest that the BJP was “foisting a candidate for the Darjeeling seat who is a rank outsider.”

  BJP, Darjeeling, Gorkhaland Janmukti Morcha, Gorkhaland Mukti Morcha