Terai Dooars: No nod for meet, forum mulls strike

Jalpaiguri, TT.April 20: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and the dissident faction of the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad are planning to call an indefinite strike in the Dooars and Terai with the administration not forthcoming about granting them permission to hold a public meeting at Nagrakata on Sunday.

That they will be denied the permission in all likelihood was evident this evening when a half-finished stage for the meeting was pulled down on the instruction of police.

“We had applied for permission to hold a meeting in Nagrakata on April 22. But the authorities didn’t grant us consent and instead, told us to stop erecting the stage and dismantle it. The government had assured us on April 17 that we would be allowed to hold any form of agitation, except strike. Accordingly, we deferred the shutdown on April 18 and 19,” said John Barla, the leader of the dissident faction of the Parishad.

The Nagrakata meeting was announced by the Joint Action Co-ordination Committee composed of the Morcha, the rebel faction of the Parishad and a number of other outfits. The committee was formed to press for the inclusion of 439 mouzas in the Terai and Dooars in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.

A forum comprising the official faction of the Parishad and some other organisations had yesterday announced a 12-hour strike in the Dooars and Terai to scuttle the meeting. These outfits are against the transfer of a single mouza in the plains to the GTA.

Barla said the committee would wait till Sunday to see if permission would be granted to hold the meeting. “If there is no positive response from the administration by then, we will hold a meeting on Monday and call an indefinite strike in the Terai and Dooars.”

The organisers had approached the Nagrakata block development officer seven days back for permission to hold the Sunday meeting. The BDO, Praveen Lama, forwarded the application to the Malbazar subdivisional officer. The SDO today said the application “is under his consideration”.

Even though no nod had come from the authorities, the organisers began erecting a stage at the European Club ground in Nagrakata. The BDO reached the ground with the police around 5pm and asked the organisers dismantle the structure. Barla announced the plan to call the indefinite strike after the stage was dismantled.

Asked if the official faction of the Parishad would go ahead with the 12-hour strike on Sunday, Rajesh Lakra, the general secretary of the Terai Dooars Regional Unit of the outfit, said: “No decision has been taken to call off the strike.”