Siliguri (WB): The Kamtapur People’s Party, which is agitating for a separate state of Kamtapur in West Bengal, has decided to support the BJP in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
KPP president Atul Roy announced this today at a press conference in the presence of BJP Jalpaiguri district president Dipen Pramanik and its candidate for the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha seat Satyalal Sarkar.
The KPP, Roy said, found BJP as the only party in the country which would respond to their demands of recognising Kamtapur language and other issues including the socio-economic development of the Kamtapuri people.
“BJP is currently the most reliable party in the country which, we believe, will identify our demands to recognise Kamtapur language and culture,” Roy said.
A couple of days ago, BJP candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat S S Ahluwalia had telephoned Roy to seek KPP’s support aiming at consolidating the Rajbangshi vote bank.
The Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat has a sizeable Rajbangshi population in the Matigara-Naxalbari and Chopra Assembly segments.
Asked what went wrong with the party’s discussion with the Trinamool Congress leadership on support for the ruling party in the election, Roy said that KPP did not find Mamata Banerjee’s party ‘reliable’ enough to address its demands.
“We were in talks with Trinamool Congress but that did not materialise… And we did not find them that reliable to address our issues,” Roy explained.
On whether the BJP leadership has promised to recognise their demand on a separate Kamtapur state, Roy said there was no such assurance.
Incidentally, ahead of the 2001 Assembly elections, KPP had joined the All India Trinamool Congress-led Bangla Bachao Front.
