Purano Neta Haru ko Samman: Sikkim's Memory Bank

Scanning through SIKKIM EXPRESSearlier this week, something caught my eye and as usual, my curiosity got the better of me. The Former Legislators’ Federation of Sikkim celebrated its 24^th Foundation Day.

Manan Kendra, chairs in neat rows, the CM garlanded and garlanding others, and a hall full of familiar-but-greying faces — people who once sat in the Assembly and ran ministries, now back together for one day, swapping stories and getting shawls.

I was an active journalist in Sikkim in the late 80’s, the Nar Bahadur Bhandari era and have tracked developments ever since. I believe the FLFS  is  a rather remarkable thing to have quietly growing in our midst. It’s something like a living history society for Sikkimese democracy. Legislators from the very first Assembly of 1975 have shared a stage with MLAs who lost their seats as recently as 2024. Congress, Sangram Parishad, SDF, SKM — whichever colour you wore while in office doesn't matter here. Once you're a "former," you're family. 

A small confession

Finding out exactly where the FLFS came from turned out to be harder than expected. There's no formal history published anywhere, no old newspaper clipping of the founding meeting, no single name credited as "founder".  Everything here has been pieced together from government press notes, the Sikkim Herald, and SIKKIM EXPRESSreports found online. So,thisis  a good-faith reconstruction : the kind of thing we would call "suniyo kura," heard-say, until someone proves otherwise.

So, roughly, where it began

Counting backward from the Foundation Day numbers — 20th in 2022, 21st in 2023, 22nd in 2024 — the Federation seems to have started around 2002. Who exactly called that first meeting is still a mystery from what's publicly available. What we do know is that many of its early members were true stalwarts of Sikkimese politics: legislators who had served since the very first Assembly under Kazi Lhendup Dorjee, right through the long Nar Bahadur Bhandari years and into the Chamling era. Names honoured at FLFS events over the years include Ram Chandra Poudyal, Mohan Gurung and Nar Bahadur Khatiwada from that pioneering first Assembly; Athup Lepcha, the Dzongu veteran remembered for both his ministerial years and his fight to protect Teesta; and D.B. Thatal, who has served as the Federation's own president for years now. It reads like a quiet who's-who of Sikkim's political story since the ‘Merger’.

Twenty years without even an office — then, suddenly …

For its first two decades, the FLFS didn't even have a proper office. As CM Prem Singh Tamang himself admitted in 2022: "Our former MLAs had no permanent office in Gangtok for 20 years. They had to shift from one place to another." Interesting, no? People who once ran departments, ministries, entire districts, and no fixed place in Gangtok to even sit and have a cup of tea together.

Then, rather suddenly, the tide turned. In 2021 came a ?10 lakh annual grant.

In 2022, an actual office-cum-guesthouse was inaugurated at the DPH complex — the Federation's first real address in twenty years.

In 2023, Foundation Day was made a permanent yearly event on the government calendar.

And in 2024 came the big one: pensions for former MLAs were roughly doubled — from ?22,000 to ?50,000 a month for single-termers, more for those who served longer — and the annual grant doubled too, to ?20 lakh.

Twenty years of nothing, followed by three years of everything. Sikkim's version of a late bloomer, you could say.

A small story worth telling 

Some will say that a government doesn't hand out pensions and guest houses without also hoping for a bit of goodwill from people who still carry weight back in their home constituencies. That's probably true, at least partly. But there's something else to consider.

The FLFS has slowly become the closest thing we have to an oral archive of our own democracy — barely fifty years old as an Indianstate. Widows of the first Assembly's MLAs are felicitated in the same breath as MLAs who lost their seats in the last election. A commemorative magazine, Purviyalok, gets released. Essay competitions run on themes like "SunauloSikkim."

 Foundation Day follows Foundation Day, and the memoriesaren’t allowed to fade.

So next July 26, the Federation celebrates its silver jubilee. Manan Kendra will fill up again with khadas and shawls and speeches.It's worth remembering what's happening in that hallisn't just a courtesy call to our political elders. It's Sikkim deciding that the people who built its democracy — however briefly they held office, whichever party they belonged to — deserve to stay part of the family photo.