Lukewarm response to strike

Shiv Sena and BJP,which had announced their support to the strike,said it was successful in parts,mostly in PSUs. “There was good response in Mumbai; members of our union participated in the strike,” said Anil Desai,Shiv Sena general secretary. He added that they had instructed only labour unions to join the strike and not the transport wings.

Transport services remained completely unaffected as trains,buses,autorickshaws and taxis were plying normally. Although Shiv Sena was supporting the strike,it kept its unions for transport services out.

“Children are having exams and they shouldn’t suffer. So,we decided to keep the entire transport sector out of the strike. Shiv Sena has a BEST union,a taxi union and a state transport bus union,but we kept the arrangement in such a way that we showed our support to the strike but did not cause inconvenience,” said Suhas Samant,a Shiv Sena union leader and a member on the BEST committee. But some BEST employees,other than bus drivers and conductors,did not attend work and joined the demonstrations,he added.

Autorickshaw union leader Thampi Kurien said from time to time,people from the union were doing a survey of the entire city to gauge if the situation was normal. “On the transport side,everything was normal. None of the autorickshaw drivers participated in the strike as planned. There was a slowdown in the availability of autorickshaws for a while in the morning as some drivers had not ventured out to determine how other drivers are responding to the strike,” Kurien said. “However,within an hour everything was normal.”