Sugar factory offices forcibly closedPathardi: The activists supporting the striking sugarcane harvest workers forcibly closed the local offices of various sugar factories and threatened the employees of dire consequences if they opened them or attempted to recruit harvest workers.Navnath Avhad, president of the corporation for nomadic and de-notified tribes and a supporter of Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, here said he would mediate for calling off the strike only if the State federation of cooperative sugar factories agreed to hold its meeting in Pathardi and agreed to force all the sugar factories in the State to give equal price to all sugarcane producers in the state.A meeting of supervisors was held here under the leadership of Avhad and it was decided to intensify the agitation of the harvest workers. The meeting has also urged the State Government to establish a corporation for the sugarcane harvest workers and to implement the Mathadi Act for workers.After the meeting, the workers organised a morcha to the offices of various sugar factories and forcibly closed the offices of Vighnahar, Sanjeevani, Kadwa, Paithan, Sangamner, Wardha and Ghodganga sugar factories.Staff reinstatedSangamner: A tribunal of University of Pune has ordered the reinstatement of the 11 employees of the local Amrutvahini Educational Society. The tribunal's presiding officer P. S. Mane has ruled that the services of the employees were illegally terminated and ordered their reinstatement while retaining continuity of services. All the employees are members of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh which had taken up their issue.IT returnsPune: A good turnout at the Income Tax Office building at Swargate marked the last day of filing returns of income yesterday.Besides the two counters at the PMT building, two additional counters at Karve Road and Nigdi offices of IT department also witnessed good response to the scheme yesterday. ``The filing of returns picked up pace during the last one week in which the majority of the total number of people filed their returns,'' said Commissioner of Income Tax J.G. Pendase. The introduction of six criteria for filing returns under Form 2C also got an appreciable response. The day was also marked with unconfirmed news about the extension of deadline for filing of returns. When contacted Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Pune region Jitaindra Mehra clarified that no communication to this effect had been received by the Pune office from Delhi headquarters.
