Skip to main content

'Violation' of migrant workers' human rights: Legal notice to IIM-A director, govt babus

Taking strong exception to the police action against protesting migrant workers off the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) on May 18, senior Gujarat High Court advocate Anandvardhan Yagnik, in a legal notice to the IIM-A director "on their behalf" has said that the workers had only been seeking to to go back to their home states, Jharkhand and West Bengal, for the last more than 20 days because they were not paid their “earned wages because of the lockdown.”
Employed for the construction of a new IIM-A building, the contractors and the principal employers, IIM-A, said the notice, “have not been listening and are completely oblivious” to the workers’ grievances, insisting, as a result, “there has been unrest amongst the workers and hence”, making them to approach “concerned authorities” of IIM-A.
“Not having received any response, out of frustration they came out on street which led to the clash between them and the police”, the notice, which has also been sent to Gujarat chief secretary and top state labour and employment department, said, adding, “However, what is more disturbing is that the police personnel brutally thrashed several of the workmen and the labourers were badly injured.”
“Around 300 of them were detained out of which around 262 having been released and around 36 are yet in detention at the Sola Police Station”, the notice said, adding, “Those who have been released, their mobile phones have been confiscated by the police. Those who are yet in custody they are not being produced before the concerned magistrate” under the pretext that “their corona tests are awaited.”
Staying in shanties to stay at the Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) Ground near to the IIM-A, while they were provided with water and sanitation as also food. But following the lockdown announced on March 24, 2020 the construction activity for the IIM-A building came to a halt and the workmen were “rendered workless” and stopped getting “any wages or remuneration”, the notice said.
“Despite the nature of brutality, the IIM administration has not spoken up and has remained mute spectators to stripping of the very fundamental rights of the migrant labourers”, the notice alleged.
Asking the IIM-A administration to ensure that all the workers are paid minimum wages in conformity with the Minimum Wages Act, the legal notice insists, it should provide them with “appropriate and humane living conditions in conformity with the obligations under the labour laws”, ensure that FIR is registered against the “erring police officers who inflicted unprovoked violence.”
Seeking “immediate release of all the migrant workers of Jharkhand and West Bengal who were detained”, the notice wants all those who are willing to go back to be safely repatriated to their “respective parent state, free of charge, and in the meanwhile they should be provided with “interim arrangements with “appropriate living and hygiene conditions.”
The legal notice says, calls the migrant workers are victims of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979; Minimum Wages Act, 1949; human rights of the migrant labourers; the dictum laid down by apex court in PUDR and Ors. Vs. UOI & Ors. Reported in (1982) 3 SCC 235, as also by the apex court in D.K. Basu Vs. State of West Bengal reported in (1997) 1 SCC 416.

Comments

TRENDING

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.