Darjeeling, July 26: The Darjeeling district administration has refused to grant permission to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha to hold its martyrs’ day meeting at Chowrastha tomorrow, with the ABGL refusing to shift its hunger strike from the spot.

Although the Morcha declared today that it would go ahead with the meeting at Chowrastha, insiders said the party would avoid a confrontation by making some other arrangements for the programme.

“We have received a report from police, expressing the apprehension that there could be a law and order problem if permission was granted (to the Morcha) to hold its function at Chowrastha,” said Surendra Gupta, the district magistrate of Darjeeling.

The Morcha has been holding meetings at Chowrastha on July 27 since 2008 in memory of 1,200 people who had died during the 28-month-long Gorkhaland agitation. Thirteen people were killed in a police firing at a GNLF rally brought out on July 27, 1987, to protest the Indo-Nepal friendship treaty of 1950.

The authorities fear law and order problems this year as the ABGL has been staging the relay hunger strike at Chowrastha, demanding the arrest of those behind the murder of the outfit’s leader Madan Tamang. The ABGL accuses the Morcha leaders of planning and executing Tamang’s assassination.

Dawa Lama, the treasurer of the Morcha, said the party was determined to go ahead with its “main function” at Chowrastha. “Since the martyrs’ column has been erected at Chowrastha and we have been holding the function there (for two years), we will go ahead with the main programme at the same venue,” he said.

Even though Lama sounded rigid, it has been learnt that the Morcha, which does not want any law and order problem following Tamang’s murder, will only hold a prayer followed by a wreath laying ceremony at Chowrastha (on the martyrs’ column). ‘The main meeting will be held at Gymkhana Club,” said a source.

Asked if the administration would allow the Morcha to go ahead with the wreath-laying ceremony, DM Gupta said: “Permission from the administration is not required for a wreath laying ceremony.”