STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Castigating the State Government for dis-regarding the grievances of school, college and polytechnic lecturers engaged on Academic Arrangements, Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) staged a protest seeking immediate salary enhancement and regularization of their services.
A strong contingent of Panther party activists along with scores of such lecturers spearheaded by Harsh Dev Singh Chairman JKNPP and Yash Paul Kundal State President Young Panthers assembled at Exhibition Ground, here and raised anti government slogans.
Urging for the implementation of the doctrine of ‘equal pay for equal work’ in J&K, Harsh Singh regretted in particular the exploitation of the highly educated youth engaged as contractual in schools, polytechnics and degree colleges on nominal wages only for the reason that they were not regularly appointed. He said that the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’ had been expounded through a large number of judgments rendered by the Apex Court and constituted a law which needed to be strictly honoured by the state govt. with respect to various govt. engagements. He said that any employee who was compelled to work at lesser wage did not do so voluntarily but did so to provide food and shelter to his family at the cost of his self respect and dignity. Paying less wages to such employee as compared to a similarly circumstanced, therefore constituted an act of exploitative enslavement emerging out of domineering position of state and hence bad in law. He pointed out that the Supreme Court had once again reiterated in its recent judgment that denying equal pay for equal work to temporary employees was oppressive, suppressive and coercive as it compelled involuntary subjugation and hence un-constitutional.
Seeking Job security to the contractual and academic arrangement lecturers rendering un-interrupted services in the Education Department for the last several years, Singh sought framing of a suitable regularization policy and inclusion of such lecturers within the ambit of special regularisation Provisions Act of 2010.
Singh cautioned the govt. not to play with the sentiments of such under employed youth. He said that Panthers Party shall stand toe to toe and shoulder to shoulder with the aggrieved lecturers in their struggle and shall not relent unless they were assured justice with full dignity and honour.
Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion include Rajesh Padgotra, Naresh Chib, Gagan Pratap Singh, Nirmal Kishore, K.K Sharma, Vinod Kumar, Balwinder, Sangeeta Sambyal, Abhimanyu Sharma, Randeep, Altaf Hussain, Kiran Sharma, Shilpa, Randeep Singh, Asif Mohd, Khajoor Singh, Udhayveer, Narinder Sharma besides others.
