Bandh won’t affect essential services
Citizens can heave a sigh of relief as private hospitals, taxi and auto drivers, hawkers and other units that fall under the service sector will not be involved in the bandh called by major trade unions on February 20-21. Essential services like water supply and electricity will not be affected during the bandh. However, most banks are likely to be shut for the two-day bandh and around 10 lakh bank employees and officers working in 90,000 bank branches of all public, private, foreign, co-operative and regional rural banks across India will observe the 48-hour bandh.
Union leader Sharad Rao said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had appointed a committee of five members to look into the demands of 11 central trade unions on a priority basis. “We are calling only for a bandh of industrial units and there will be no strike or bandh by the BEST, State Transport, BMC, TMC and other corporations of the state,” said Mr Rao.
He further added, “Since this is a high-powered committee and includes A.K. Antony, Sharad Pawar, Sushilkumar Shinde, Mallikarjun Kharge, we hope it will come out with a positive outcome. Otherwise, we will be forced to call a Bharat bandh again after three months.” He appealed to other communist organisations to observe the bandh in industrial units only at the national level.
Announcing the decision at a press conference, Mr Rao launched a scathing attack on Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray saying that he had betrayed them by withdrawing from the bandh on the grounds that it would affect students appearing for exams. He said, “The Shiv Sena announced a few days ago that it would participate in the February 20-21 bandh. A few days later it said that it would observe the bandh only on February 20. Now, it will call for an industrial units bandh only.”
The Mumbai Taximen’s Union, BEST Jagrit Kamgar Sangathana, Agriculture Produce Market Committee markets Associations etc. had already declared that since they are not industrial units, they would not take part in the strike.
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