DA hike demand: Bengal staff strike work despite govt warning

Similar protests were held in the district headquarters, block development offices, municipalities and panchayats as the number of employees attending their offices was lesser than usual.

At Midnapore College in Paschim Medinipur, North Bengal University in Siliguri and Siksha Bhavan, protesters belonging to the Democratic Students Organisation and the BJP raised slogans and forcibly tried to stop the students and employees from entering offices around 10am.

More than 50 per cent employees are likely to have participated in the strike even as some employee organisations pegged the figure at 80-90 per cent in the majority of the offices.

The Joint Forum of State Government Employees, which had called the strike in government offices, schools and colleges across the state with the support of the CPIM-led Left Front, claimed the strike was successful. Members of the BJP-dominated employees’ council and Congress-dominated Confederation of State Government Employees also supported the strike.

Sanket Chakraborty, general secretary of the Steering Committee, a government employees’ organisation which supported the strike, said, “We are overwhelmed by the response of the employees at large. The government should wake up and fulfil our demands at the earliest or we will be forced to launch a more vigorous agitation.”