Overview
- Union Home Minister Amit Shah chaired a tripartite meeting at Sukna that led the Ministry of Home Affairs to constitute a high‑level committee to draft the final agreement.
- The committee is headed by interlocutor Pankaj Kumar Singh and will work on modalities for a political settlement covering the Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars within the constitutional framework.
- Participants at the meeting included West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, senior Gorkha leaders such as Bimal Gurung and Mann Ghisingh, and BJP MPs and MLAs who represent the hill region.
- Officials said the Centre pledged to consider other local demands sympathetically and to provide central funding, but interlocutors cautioned the process is nascent with no set timeframe for a final deal.
- The move revives formal tripartite talks after decades of interim bodies like the 1988 DGHC and the 2011 GTA failed to settle identity and autonomy claims and raises strategic questions because the region borders Nepal and lies near the Siliguri Corridor.