State Govt Offices At Standstill For 2nd Day

Police Foils JCC March In Jammu, 150 Held

SRINAGAR: Even as work in state government offices remained suspended for the second day running on Saturday, police took nearly 150 striking employees and their leaders into custody in Jammu to foil their Raj Bhavan gherao.

The strike, the latest in a long series of recurring lockdowns over the past two years, has come as the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC), an amalgam of various employees unions, took its demands to the states summer capital.

Accompanying the secretariats seasonal shift to Jammu, the strike has renewed the employees stir after the government failed to meet what the JCC calls its commitments by a September deadline.

Marching to the Governor House today following speeches by leaders at the Maulana Azad Stadium, striking employees ran into heavy police barricades at the Jewel Chowk, reports said.

As slogans against the government rent the air, the marchers pressed ahead despite the police resistance, but were halted again at the Indira Chowk where they held a sit-in.

The police broke up the dharna by bundling scores of employees into waiting vans along with a number of leaders.

The JCC said that over a hundred employees had been taken into custody in the police action.

Formed over two years ago to fight for 6th Pay Commission benefits, the JCCs demands have whittled down to hiking the retirement age and regularising various categories of temporary employees after the government refused to budge on its stand on the sixth pay commission arrears.

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