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EK Santha
Mahendra Prasad Gurung
Published Date: Apr 11, 2014
@DNA
The general elections assume significance in Sikkim not because the outcome
will have any impact on the national arena; the lone member that the state
sends to Parliament is unlikely to influence the government formation at the
Centre as does Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. However, the significance is that
Sikkim is simultaneously going for assembly elections. In the event that
Pawan Kumar Chamling wins the assembly polls it will be his fifth consecutive
term as Chief Minister. A similar feat was achieved by Communist icon Jyoti
Basu (Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000). Leaders like Basu and
Chamling, Sikkim’s Chief Minister since 1994, are rare phenomena in these
times of severe anti-incumbent sentiments among voters.
This is the ninth elections since
Sikkim’s merger with the Indian Union in 1975. With a total population of 6.9
lakhs, Sikkim has an electorate of just 3.69 lakh voters, spread across 32
assembly constituencies over four districts. Among them are constituencies
with as few as 6,000 voters while the largest have 15,000 voters. In the
social sense, Sikkim has three main ethnic groups: the Lepchas, Bhutias and
the Nepalese. Being minority communities, the Lepchas and Bhutias have
reservation in the legislature; out of 32 seats, 12 are reserved for them.
Two seats are reserved for Scheduled Caste communities, one seat for the
Lamas from the monasteries, and the remaining 17 seats come under general
category. The Nepalese, the majority community in Sikkim, enjoyed 50 per cent
reservation in the legislature till 1978. This is an area of contention now.
In the Seventies and early-Eighties, the issue that dominated Sikkim politics
was the merger with India. While the Sikkim National Congress, which had
campaigned for the merger, won a landslide victory (31 out of 32 seats) in
1975, the tide soon turned in favour of Chamling’s predecessor, Nar Bahadur
Bhandari, who formed the government in 1979. Bhandari’s anti-merger
propaganda had landed him in the Berhampur jail in Odisha during the
Emergency. The inexperience and consequent administrative chaos of the first
government and the general perception of Bhandari being victimised helped his
victory in 1979.
The ethnic politics of Sikkim landed the successive Bhandari governments in
trouble more than once. Before he could complete his second term, his
government was brought down by a no-confidence motion on the issue of income
tax exemption to the Bhutia-Lepcha communities. The issue of including a few
more castes in the list of OBC category from Sikkim resulted in another
fissure in 1992. The state entered a phase of protracted political chaos.
Pawan Kumar Chamling, a contractor from South Sikkim, and a former minister,
used the OBC issue to split Bhandari’s Sikkim Sangram Parishad, after being
expelled from it. In 1994, Chamling founded the Sikkim Democratic Front
(SDF).
In the 1994 elections, the SDF won 19 out of 32 seats and formed the
government. Chamling’s approach to governance — radically different from
Bhandari — rewrote the political equations that governed Sikkim politics.
Bhandari could never shed his aristocratic pretensions and hence could not
connect to the masses. On the other hand, Chamling’s down-to-earth approach
and his skill in the art of entertaining the masses with his oratory skills
(his public meetings stretch up to four hours and he invariably enters into a
dialogue with his audience) and accessibility has helped him stay connected.
Despite the charges of corruption and nepotism levelled against him by
opponents, Chamling’s popularity only increased over each term. In the 1999
elections, his party won 24 out of 32 seats; in 2004 the SDF swept 31 out of
32 seats; and in the 2009 elections, SDF swept all the 32 seats.
It is a fact that with Chamling coming to power there is governance in the
state. Visible governance! The state’s shift to organic farming, the
considerable improvements in the primary education sector, and the focus on
the tourism industry have intensified the SDF’s mass appeal. The SDF’s
72-page manifesto for the 2014 polls details achievements in energy and
power, organic farming, education, IT and tourism development, even quoting
travel guide Lonely Planet to substantiate its claims! Another Chamling claim
to good governance has been the 50 per cent reservation for women in
Panchayati Raj institutions which was implemented in the 2012 panchayat
elections.
The main opposition party, the one-year-old Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) is
helmed by PS Golay — once a Chamling confidante and a three-term minister in
past SDF governments. He turned a dissident after being denied a ministerial
berth in the 2009 government on the pretext of providing space for ‘new
faces’. Rather than ideological rift, Golay’s personal grudge with Chamling
gave birth to the SKM. Among the first successes for the new party was the
entry of prominent social and environmental activist Dawa Lepcha, who
protested against the six proposed hydel power projects in the Dzongu area of
North Sikkim, known as Lepcha Reserve. Lepchas, the original inhabitants of
Sikkim, believe and treat this area with sanctity and worried about the
adverse environmental effects of these projects. Following large-scale
protests led by Dawa Lepcha and Tenzing Lepcha who went on hunger strike, the
government cancelled five of the six projects. The support of the social
forum, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), and Dawa’s candidature from Dzongu
have given the SKM a much-needed toehold in North Sikkim.
However, the breakout of election-related violence in west Sikkim and the
death of two SDF activists may damage the SKM’s prospects. Suddenly, a people
without an effective opposition party have begun to view the new party with
scepticism. By condemning political violence strongly and putting up posters
of its martyrs all over, the SDF is turning the deaths to its advantage. Much
like the Aam Aadmi Party’s impact, the questions abuzz in Sikkim are whether
a 20-day campaign by a one-year-old party can trump a party ruling for 20
years and if Chamling can record a fifth term in the Chief Minister’s office.
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