Also on Adani’s laundry list of troubles: A truckers’ protest that isn’t slowing down

For both the Congress and the BJP, jobs and employment were key poll planks. The Congress promised five lakh jobs while the BJP assured eight lakh jobs in five years. The closure of the plans has come as a jolt to the Congress as it occurred at a time it was dealing with internal manoeuvrings ahead of a Cabinet expansion.

The government has said that Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is closely monitoring the situation and seeking timely reports from officials. “We do not want the protest to transform into something bigger,” said the CM’s Principal Advisor (Media) Naresh Chauhan. “The concerns of the truck operators have been conveyed and a consulting agency has been roped in to calculate freight rates. We are estimating that there will be some resolution in the weeks. Unlike for the previous BJP government, the concerns of local service providers are of prime importance to us.”

Criticising the state government’s “incompetence”, the state BJP said its national president J P Nadda and Cabinet minister Anurag Thakur were aware of the situation and in contact with the Adani Group. “The senior party leaders are concerned about the livelihood of the operators. They are making efforts at the central level. It is clear that the state government is unable to handle the situation. The sub-committee formed has not even been notified. The issue has revealed their incompetency,” said spokesperson Karan Nanda.

A week after the plants shut down, the state government set up a sub-committee chaired by RD Nazim, the Principal Secretary at the Industries Department to resolve the dispute and tasked HIMCON, a state-owned agency, to calculate the freight rates based on a formula proposed by the High Court. HIMCON’s recommendations are not known yet.

The truck associations are waiting for the HIMCON report and planning to intensify protests. On Wednesday, their representatives called on CM Sukhu to emphasise the need for a resolution. The government is said to have assured the truckers’ unions that their interest is paramount and the new freight rates will be as per their demands. But a resolution is still nowhere in sight.

The truck operators have cried foul over the Adani announcement coming right after the election results. “We are only concerned with the rates that we deserve. But it does appear that there is some politics behind it. The timing is suspect. There is support for the state government because we only want a resolution for things,” said Krishan Sharma, a trucker.

Adani Cement has accused the truck operators of controlling the market by oversupplying vehicles and maintaining a rate profitable only to the unions. In a January 19 letter to the chairman of the Permanent Standing Committee of Himachal Pradesh and copied to the state’s Chief Secretary, Adani Cement CEO Ajay Kapur wrote, “It is a very alarming situation as unions are effectively controlling and making all transport-related operational decisions that belong in the domain of companies … Since the freight rate is controlled by the unions, they have artificially kept it at a very high level.”

In response, the truckers wrote to the chairman of the permanent standing committee on January 23, saying they are governed by the HP Cooperative Society Act, 1978, Rule 1971, and registered by-laws. The cement work was allocated and divided by the local administration, which nullifies any attempt to control the market, they claimed.

“We only function as per the demand allotted to us. The SDM (sub-divisional magistrate) is there to regulate it. We do not work at anyone else’s behest,” said Krishan Sharma.

The Adani Group’s business in Himachal Pradesh is not limited to just cement production. The group’s AgroFresh division also procures apples from the hill state on a large scale during the season and supplies them in the domestic and international markets.