In recent weeks and months, aggrieved employees have been hitting the streets across Jammu and Kashmir to seek the attention of the government in addressing their employment matters.
Warning “strict disciplinary action”, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has ordered the employees to stay away from strikes and demonstrations.
A circular issued by J&K’s General Administration Department (GAD), which is headed by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, on Friday, November 3, noted that “some employees are resorting to demonstrations and strikes in favour of certain demands”.
Ponting to Rule 20 (ii) of Jammu and Kashmir Government Employees (Conduct) Rules, 1971, the circular stated that any demonstrations and strikes by the employees is an “act of serious indiscipline and misconduct”.
The administration has warned that “strict disciplinary action” will be taken against any employee who is found involved in “organizing demonstration(s) and strike(s) in terms of rule mentioned supra,” the GAD circular (No. GAD-ADM0III/158/2023-09-GAD) stated.
Rule (ii) of J&K employee conduct rules bars the government employees from organising or participating in “any form of strike in connection with their service matter or the service matter of other government employee”.
“Therefore, all Administrative Secretaries are requested to circulate these instructions to employees in their respective Department(s) to desist from all such uncalled for demonstrations and strikes: an act of serious indiscipline and misconduct,” the GAD circular states.
The circular comes at a time when hundreds of employees have been sacked by Jammu and Kashmir administration on allegedly arbitrary grounds while close to 50 employees have been terminated in the last four years on charges of being a threat to the “security of the state.”
Presently, there are more than five lakh employees in Jammu and Kashmir. The number of contractual employees is close to one lakh who are hired by various departments against existing vacancies without giving them employment benefits of permanent employees.
In recent weeks and months, aggrieved employees, including those working with the central government departments, have been hitting the streets in bouts across Jammu and Kashmir to seek the attention of the government in addressing their employment matters.
Thousands of contractual employees hired for the central government schemes such as National Health Mission, MNREGA, and Gram Rozgar Sevak have taken out their anger against the government on the streets, while demanding an increase in their wages and regularisation of their employment.
On Monday, October 30, dozens of employees of Jammu and Kashmir Road Transport Corporation staged a protest at Press Enclave in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk to demand the resolution of their demands, including regular employment benefits, regularisation, and implementation of the Minimum Wages Act.
Before the reading down of Article 370 by the Union government, Srinagar’s Press Enclave worked as an ideal interface of the J&K government with the public.
Political parties, business leaders, social activists, students, or any aggrieved person from any part of Kashmir would surface at the Press Enclave and stage protest or demonstration there while media persons, who hover around in the area, brought it to the attention of the authorities.
In the aftermath of the downgrading of J&K into two Union territories, the Press Enclave fell silent as authorities cracked down on protesters across the Valley. In recent months, however, the former hub of journalists, which now also houses the office of J&K’s counterterrorism unit, had again turned into a happening place with several protests organised here in recent months.
In 2021, thousands of employees of J&K’s Power Department went on a strike in Jammu and Kashmir, plunging the union territory into darkness amid reports that the government was planning to privatise the department and merge it with the Power Grid Corporation of India.
The employees later called off the strike after the administration assured them that the plan had been put on hold.
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandit employees had gone on strike for months following a spate of targeted killings of the minority Hindus and migrant workers by militants in 2021, which prompted many of them to leave the Valley. The strike was called off after nearly a year.
