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2 employee unions in Rajasthan pull out of strike

Kamla Bora in Jaipur

Two employee unions have withdrawn their statewide indefinite strike in Rajasthan after several rounds of talks with the government yesterday.

The two unions, headed by Udai Singh Rathore and Mohan Lal Jain, announced withdrawal of the strike late last night.

The surprising development came after several rounds of talks with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and senior bureaucrats through the day.

Though the two union leaders -- Rathore, a Congress legislator, and Jain -- failed to extract any new promises from the government, they expressed the hope that Gehlot would improve upon the package offered to the employees on Tuesday.

But the Joint Action Committee of state government employees refused to end the 58-day-old strike and accused Rathore and Jain of trying to destroy its unity. The JAC, consisting of three other employee unions and a few splinter groups of the union headed by Rathore, said its agitation would continue till the government concedes its demands.

In fact, the JAC had launched the strike on December 15 last year, and the Rathore and Jain groups joined it only on January 11. Both Rathore and Jain have been maintaining that it was not their agitation, and they had joined it only to strengthen staffers' unity.

The two union leaders wrote to the government again yesterday, expressing their willingness to settle the issue through talks. And after a series of talks, they announced their decision, accusing the JAC of handling the employees' demands in an "inappropriate" manner.

With these two unions pulling out of the strike, the state government's hopes that a majority of the employees will be back on duty soon, allowing it to tackle the dissenters more firmly.

But the JAC also got a morale-booster yesterday when Sukomal Sen, general secretary of the All-India State Government Employees Confederation, visited Jaipur to express solidarity with the strikers. Sen urged the state government to arrive at a respectable settlement with its agitating staff.

Meanwhile, the administration has put elaborate security measures in place in Jaipur in view of the JAC's call for an indefinite dharna (sit-in) by the strikers from today.

Prohibitory orders have been promulgated in the entire Jaipur municipal area and the Rapid Action Force has been deployed.

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