The Karnataka State Road Transport Employees League called off its two-week-long strike on Wednesday a day after the Karnataka High Court observed that the workers of the state road transport corporations (RTCs) had chosen the "worst time to go on a strike" citing the pandemic.
The announcement came from farmer leader Kodihalli Chandrashekhar who has been leading the strike for the past 15 days.
"The court has said that we should attend work. We respect the trust and the responsibility the court has placed on us. We will postpone the strike temporarily and resume work from Thursday. That doesn't mean our struggle ends," he said.
Chandrashekhar said that the department is demanding an undertaking from the employees that they will not resort to strike again. "It is nothing but taking away their fundamental rights. We will bring all these issues before the court in our application to be filed on Thursday," he added.
He demanded that the government roll back the punitive measures initiated against nearly 20,000 employees. "As many as 2,169 have been dismissed, 2,941 suspended, 7,666 given a show-cause notice and about 8,000 transferred. This is the government's policy of suppression and it has to stop," he urged.
The strike had started petering out much before the formal announcement as thousands of employees reported to duty on Wednesday, allowing the KSRTC, BMTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC to run 12,879 buses by 6 pm. This is more than 50 per cent of the 21,000-odd buses that were operated daily before the strike. Though the corporations have over 24,000 buses, the services were slightly cut down during the pandemic.
Published 21 April 2021, 13:20 IST