Congress leader George Mercier, who stepped down as the president of INTUC-led BrahMos Staff Association following Defence Minister A K Antony’s now famous ‘BrahMos outburst’, came out with proof that there indeed existed an INTUC union at the BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Ltd (BATL) and INTUC state president R Chandrasekharan was its former president.
Following Antony’s outburst, Chandrasekharan had announced that the BATL didn’t have an INTUC union. “INTUC state president R Chandrasekharan’s statement that there was no INTUC Union in Brahmos Aerospace Ltd was exposed as a blatant lie,” Mercier said.
“The previous organisation, Keltec had a union named ‘Keltec Staff Congress’ affiliated to INTUC as Aff.No: 11315 on January 16, 2004.
This was earlier registered under the TU Act as No: 01-05 of 2003.
The Union was later renamed under the TU Act as ‘BrahMos Staff Association’ on December 8, 2009. This was intimated to the INTUC and the name change was also effected there, he said.
The voters’ list of affiliated unions, prepared by the INTUC Central and state committees on February 28, 2012, also lists BrahMos Staff Association in the registered and affiliated unions register, he said. In fact, it was Chandrasekharan himself who had inaugurated the seventh annual meeting of BrahMos Staff Association at the DCC office here on September 17, 2010. “R Chandrasekharan himself was the president of ‘Brahmos Staff Association’, before I became the president. It remains a mystery why Chandrasekharan chose to make a public statement fully aware that he was lying to the public. If Chandrasekharan has an iota of morality left in him, he should apologise publicly and quit his post,” Mercier said.