Telangana RTC JAC to decide on ending strike on 20th November
HYDERABAD: The RTC Joint Action Committee (JAC) has decided to take one more day to decide on calling off the strike.
"We are yet to get a copy of the Telangana High Court verdict. We expect it by tomorrow. After going through it and discussing the legal nuances with experts, we will decide on Wednesday," RTC JAC convenor E Ashwathama Reddy said at a news conference here on Tuesday.
However, the copy reached the union leaders on Tuesday night, and sources said the leaders were poring over it till late in the night. The high court on Tuesday referred the RTC employees’ strike to the labour commissioner, asking him to decide if the issue should be sent to the labour court for a decision on whether the strike is legal or not.
“We will take a decision tomorrow (Wednesday) evening. The strike will go on,” Ashwathama Reddy said, pointing out that he had the sanction of all the unions to make the announcement as all of them had discussed the pros and cons of continuing the strike. "This decision was taken unanimously after all the leaders of the unions at the depot-, zone-, and garage-level, and those of the central committee discussed it," Ashwathama Reddy said.
On Tuesday, the 46th day of the strike, it appeared that the workforce overwhelmingly wanted the deadlock to end so that they could resume duty.
However, after an almost-eight-hour meeting — of the major unions with 97 depot leaders and other state-level leaders of the Telangana Mazdoor Union (TMU), Employees Union, Supervisors Association and Staff and Workers Federation — it was unanimously decided that the strike would continue till Wednesday, when they would meet again and take stock of the situation.
It is learnt that though the employees wanted to return to work owing to their distressed financial condition, there was a lurking fear that if they called off the strike and got back to work, they might be made to sign declarations with some demands from the management’s end, such as leaving the unions’ fold, which might hurt their interests in the future. Staff also said they feared that the government wouldn’t give them their jobs back.
HC extends interim order on privatisation of RTC routes
The bench, comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A Abhishek Reddy, made these observations on a PIL filed by Prof PL Vishweshwar Rao, vice-president of the Telangana Jana Samithi, challenging the State Cabinet’s November 2 decision to privatise permits of 5,100 TSRTC routes. The petitioner sought a stay on all further proceedings on privatisation of the permits.
Earlier, the bench directed the government and RTC authorities not to take any steps that would precipitate the situation due to privatisation of permits, till the next hearing. On Tuesday, the bench extended the earlier interim order till adjudication of the PIL.
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After perusing the contents of the Cabinet decision, the bench said there is no bar under Section 102 on the government taking such a decision. The petitioner’s counsel, Chikkudu Prabhakar, said there was an ulterior motive behind the Cabinet’s decision to privatise the permits.
The decision was taken when the RTC workmen were on strike, with the staff facing huge hardships for want of salaries since September. Even the chief minister said there would be no RTC in the near future and that statement is substantiated by the Cabinet decision to allocate 5,100 permits to private persons, he argued, adding that the government has violated Section 102 of the Act and misused its powers.
Reacting to this, the court said the Cabinet decision can be challenged only when various sections of the Act are violated prior to the decision of allocating permits to private persons. As of now, that stage has not arrived and it is only the commencement of the privatisation process.
The petitioner’s allegation that the government has a hidden agenda and ulterior motive should be proved with sufficient evidence, the court said, adding that the government might have taken the Cabinet decision since Section 67 of the Act permits it to do so. “Show us the law as to whether the Cabinet decision is legal or illegal”, the CJ told the counsel.
Not satisfied with the counsel’s submissions, the bench said Section 102 of the Act does not speak about the livelihood of workers. Since Section 67 permits the state to take a decision, the Cabinet might have taken the decision intending to dilute the RTC’s monopoly by introducing private state carriages.
Had the Parliament of India said it is worried about the livelihood and welfare of the workers, then so many amendments to various laws could not have been made. In fact, the trend is more and more privatisation is in the anvil, the bench observed.
“In the 1980s, Air India ruled the skies, but now, so many private airlines have invaded the skies. Though some have exited, the others are ruling the skies. The decision taken by Parliament has opened the doors to private airlines and the law does not prohibit introduction of the private sector into the transportation sector,” the bench said, adding that the petitioner’s argument that the Cabinet decision would adversely affect the welfare of employees was misplaced. “Private players have even invaded the Indian Railways, which was a monopoly till some years back”, the bench said and posted the matter to Wednesday for further hearing.