Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the trade union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, denied that the BJP-led government did it an undue favour by extending facilities of a recognised union to its wing in the postal sector. “The government has not given the postal wing of the BMS anything undue. There was an order by the DoPT issued in 2011 to extend certain facilities to it. Due to political reasons, the UPA government did not implement it,” said Virjesh Upadhyay, general secretary of BMS. M Krishnan, secretary general of Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers had earlier said just after the BJP government took over, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad granted BMS’s Bharatiya Postal Employees Federation (BPEF) and its affiliated unions facilities meant for recognised unions despite them not being eligible. Upadhyay said the organisation had approached Prasad as “an injustice (was) done to it.” He said: “We just wanted the government to implement an existing order, it was nothing new.” To another allegation that the BMS’s decision to abstain had forced central trade unions to defer the November 24 strike against the coal ordinance, Upadhyay said the other trade unions had not “kept BMS in the loop” at the local level when they planned the strike. “There is nothing new in the coal ordinance issued on October 21. All these provisions were there already and other unions had refused to strike against the same in 2013,” Upadhyay said.
