Know Your Leader | Farmer, poet, longest-serving CM: Sikkim's Pawan Chamling banks on performance and charm

Sikkim CM Pawan Kumar Chamling

Atharva Pandit
Moneycontrol News 

Sikkim's 'common man' Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling first assumed the post in December 1994. Many of those who will be voting for the first time in 2019 weren't even born then.

This year, Chamling completes 25 years in power, a distinction previously held only by the late Communist chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu.

A number of factors seems to have worked in Chamling's favour ever since he took over the top post, and even before that. As chief minister, Chamling is said to have a strong connection with the people of Sikkim, a small hill state with a population of over 6.19 lakh people, as of 2011.

Chamling, and his party, the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), won 22 out of 32 seats in the state during the last election. The party increased its tally in the assembly after opposition lawmakers switched to the SDF, taking the total number of MLAs to 29.

In one of his fortune-changing moments in politics, Chamling reportedly lit a candle in the Sikkim assembly to 'search for democracy' in 1992. This was seen as a dramatic act of rebellion against his mentor and former CM Nar Bahadur Bhandari.

Chamling was then a member of Bhandari's party, the Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP), on whose ticket he contested and won in the 1985 Assembly polls. Four years later, as a display of his popularity, over 96 percent votes were cast for him from the Damthang assembly constituency.

According to observers, Bhandari, who passed away in 2017, should have recognised Chamling's threat in 1989 itself. For, four years later, Chamling would go on to launch his own party, and grab power a year after that, never to look back.

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Chamling's rise, however, had started way before that, beginning 1982, when he was elected unopposed as the president of Yangang Panchayat.

Chamling has not only dominated the political discourse, but also the electoral politics in Sikkim, winning 31 seats during the 2004 polls and sweeping all seats in 2009.

While challenges in the form of allegations of corruption and autocracy— something that Chamling himself had alleged against Bhandari when he had rebelled— remained, one in the form of a political rival arrived in 2013, when Prem Singh Tamang, a legislator in SDF, rebelled.

Tamang, better known as PS Golay, floated his own party — the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), which won 10 seats in the last assembly polls. This was a feat considering Chamling and SDF's total hold over the state for years. The SKM also recorded a vote share of 40.80 percent.

In 2015, however, seven SKM MLAs defected to the ruling SDF. A year later, Golay was disqualified as a member of the Assembly after his conviction in a corruption case.

Observers state that Chamling has worked his charm to bring about a constructive change in Sikkim. In January, the SDF government announced that it would roll out the Universal Basic Income in the state, becoming the first state to do so. Moreover, according to reports, poverty has been reduced to a great extent, with population below poverty line in the state recorded at 8 percent. This is a massive improvement from 40 percent in 1994, when Chamling took charge. He has also been praised for continued GDP growth of Sikkim, which has consistently been above national average.

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A farmer-turned-poet-turned-politician, Chamling has often been associated with the environment, an asset that he has turned to his advantage in governance and politics. Chamling is often called the 'greenest chief minister of India', and he lived up to his name by starting the country's first green mission. It reaped benefits when Sikkim became the first organic state in India in 2015.