Even though West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly claimed Pahar Hasche the hills are smiling in reference to political unrest in North Bengal, the newly formed political party Gorkha Jan Kalyan Manch (GJKM) has re-launched the Gorkhaland agitation. Since November 15, 2016 the President of GJKM, Krishna Chettri has started an indefinite hunger strike to press for Gorkhaland statehood. Unlike earlier agitations for Gorkhaland which were launched from the hills, the centre for this latest agitation is in Limbu Busty, Prakash Nagar, Siliguri.

The demand for Gorkhaland statehood caught the national fancy during the bloody agitation held between 1984-1988. Led by Subash Ghising, the violence resulted in the death of over 1200 people. This ended with the formation of Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), a semi-autonomous body in 1988.

Ghising ran DGHC as his personal fiefdom, resulting in widespread corruption and nepotism. Discontentment was rife in the Darjeeling region in early 2000s, and seeing his popularity dwindle, Ghising had demanded that the hills be included under VIth Scheduled of the Indian Constitution which allows for an autonomous tribal form of governance. Although the then-CPI(M) government in West Bengal had formally passed the resolution accepting the proposal in 2005, there was protest in the hills as by then the people of the region had gotten tired of Ghising and saw this as another ploy to subvert the Gorkhaland statehood demand.