Karnataka - Bangalore

Legislature staff protest

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS: Government employees working in Vidhana Soudha staging dharna in front of the office of Principal Secretary of Karnataka Legislature in Bangalore on Tuesday.

BANGALORE: A large number of officers and employees in the Karnataka Legislature Secretariat struck work demanding withdrawal of the notification for direct recruitment of officers affecting their promotional opportunities.

Leading a delegation of the staff, the Joint Secretary of the Karnataka State Government Employees’ Association K.V. Muddaiah first protested against the notification in the chamber of the Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Legislature, D’Souza Robinson and urged him to withdraw the same.

When it failed to yield any result, they went to the Legislators’ Home, where they met the former Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Krishna and presented a memorandum to him demanding the same.

Mr. Muddaiah said that the officers and employees in different cadres in the Secretariat had presented their objections to the preliminary notification but the Secretariat was going ahead with the process of recruitment without hearing them.

Direct recruitment to class II posts would deprive the junior assistants, section officers and officers serving in the secretariat of further promotions. The argument was that the secretariat needed graduates and those with suitable qualifications. He said the officers were talented and they should be encouraged. In the legislatures of other States, there was no direct recruitment, he added.

An officer of the rank of senior assistant said that works such as preparing Bills to be tabled before the House, convening the sessions of the Assembly or the Council, or arranging and helping new MLAs or MLCs to take oath in the respective houses and issuing bulletins were delicate jobs which inexperienced persons could not do.

While Mr. Robinson said he had only implemented what the Special Board had approved and only the Speaker could give any relief at this juncture, Mr. Krishna, who received the memorandum, assured the Association that he would consider their request to keep it in abeyance. The Board comprised the Chief Minister, the Finance and Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, the Speaker and Chairman of the Legislative Council.

Several women officers reminded Mr. Krishna that his predecessors such as B.G.Banakar, D.B. Chandre Gowda and K.R. Ramesh Kumar had withdrawn such decisions and helped the secretariat staff and urged him not to implement the notification, while demitting the office.

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