The 13,000 employees and officials of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation ended their indefinite strike on Tuesday after Mayor gave them assurance that their five key demands would be met in a weeks time. Leaders of Vadodara Municipal Corporation Employees Union (VMCEU) held a meeting with Mayor Jyoti Pandya early in the day to resolve the stand-off and called off their strike after the latter gave them an assurance. The Mayor assured us that our demands will be met within a week and we ended our strike, Bipin Shah,general secretary of VMCEU said. The Union submitted a list of demands to the Mayor. Their key demands included installing CCTV cameras in the corporation building to ensure safety of the employees and abolishing the practise of councillors directly asking civic officials to do certain work. However,the Union today dropped its key demand for a written apology from Congress leaders allegedly involved in attack on Patel. The employees and officials of the civic body had gone on an indefinite strike on Monday in protest of ink attack on PM Patel,Executive Engineer and chairman of JNNURM Cell in VMC on Friday. A group of Congress workers and councillors,led by Vadodara city Congress General Secretary Narendra Jaiswal,had entered the office of the Executive Engineer on Friday afternoon and had hurled black ink in the officers face. They had gone to Patels office to submit a memorandum demanding a vigilance probe into alleged flaws in design of the newly inaugurated Lalbuag railway over-bridge. As the officials and employees boycotted work,VMC reportedly suffered revenue loss of Rs1 crore on Monday. The inconvenience to public and revenue losses were also reasons to withdraw our strike, Shah added. Cong wants Mayor to act against workers Congress on Tuesday demanded action against VMC workers for going on strike. They had gone on strike illegally and we want Municipal Commissioner and Mayor to take action against them, Vadodara city Congress president Narendra Ravat said. He said the ruling BJP had instigated the civic employees to deflect attention from the Congress agitation against irregularities in the construction of Lalbaug over-bridge. Ravat was arrested on Monday in connection with ink attack on P M Patel but was later released on bail by a city court.
