The Government on Thursday introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha, which will replace the ordinance promulgated on June 30 last to make it illegal for workers engaged in the essential defence services to go on strike or launch an agitation.
The government referred to the prevailing situation on the northern front of the country to drive home the point that the proposed legislation was necessary to ensure uninterrupted supply of weapons, ammunition and other military hardware to the armed forces and to maintain the defence preparedness of the nation. It was apparently referring to the 15-month-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
Ajay Bhatt, the Minister of State for Defence, introduced the Bill in the lower House of Parliament amid din even as the opposition MPs were agitating against the government over the snooping row and the controversial farm laws.
The government made the move to seek parliamentary approval for the Essential Defence Services Bill, 2021 even as several organisations of the employees of the ordnance factories recently condemned the June 30 ordinance, calling it “draconian” and demanded its withdrawal. The ordinance was promulgated as the employees of the 41 ordnance factories were planning to go on an indefinite strike from July 26. The employees were planning to protest the decision of the Union Government to convert the 41 factories of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) into seven Defence Public Sector Undertakings.
The Bill seeks to replace the June 30 ordinance, which was promulgated to define the “essential defence services” and “strike”, empower the Central Government to prohibit strike in essential defence services, provide for disciplinary action, including dismissal against employees participating in strike and to provide for penalties for illegal strikes, instigation thereof, and providing for financial aid to such illegal strikes.
(Published 22 July 2021, 10:26 IST)
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