The members of Uttarakhand General-OBC Employees Association commenced an indefinite strike from Monday against the demand for reservations in promotion by SC-ST employees.
According to the members of the association, the indecisiveness of the State Government in the matter is the reason for their strike. Meanwhile, the State government issued a no work, no pay order but this has not had the intended effect on the general and OBC workers carrying out work boycott.
While addressing the crowd, the state head of association Deepak Joshi said that in spite of the judgement of Supreme Court that seniority and merit should be the criteria for promotion, the State Government is not implementing the order because of the politics of the vote banks. According to the members of the association, the Government is trying to challenge the Supreme Court order or manipulate it so that they do not displease their vote banks.
Recently, the regional head of the Uttarakhand SC/ST Employees Federation Karam Ram accused Joshi of making an insulting statement when he said that the government should appoint a nodal officer for the budget session of Vidhan Sabha from SC/ST employees.
Talking about this to The Pioneer, Joshi said, “There is nothing wrong in what I said.
They were claiming that they will work double throughout the budget session so I just stated that the Government should also appoint the nodal officer from SC-ST employees too. Besides, if the government will keep suspending the decision, the bitterness among the employees will keep on increasing with time.”
Joshi also stated that the teams of their association from Almora, Pauri, Bageshwar, Rudraprayag and Chamoli have arrived and their regional team will also arrive in Gairsain to gherao the MLAs.
According to one of the general-OBC employees Prajikata Negi, “Giving reservation to the needy is understood but proposing reservations for promotion is very wrong.
An employee seeks promotion because he/she works very hard for their respective organisations. Reservation in promotion will devastate the culture of hard work and improvement in merit.
We’ll not back out until the State Government rejects the demand for reservation in promotion.”
To show their anger and disappointment towards the government, the members of the association also burned the copies of the government’s order of no work, no pay issued considering the work boycott by the general-OBC employees.