Rehan Showkat
Srinagar, Jan 30 : Employees of Election Department under the banner of Jammu and Kashmir Field Association on Wednesday went on two days strike against rejecting of their proposal which they had submitted to the government last year.
“The protest was also staged in August last year, and at that time government promised to redress our genuine demands. And our department presented a proposal regarding the redressal of our genuine demands to the government. The proposal has been rejected by the finance department on Tuesday which forced us to hit roads again,” they said as they staged a protest march from Old Secretariat to Press Enclave here.
“We took to streets due to indifferent approach of government,” Showkat Ahmad Dar, a protester said, adding that they have announced two days strike beginning from today to “wake up” the government to meet their demands “already accepted by the government last year.”
The genuine demands, the protesters said, include the creation of tehsildar posts at the district level as directed by election commission of India, remove anomalies in their pay /salaries and put it at par with the revenue department or at par with clerical staff or at least similar to that of Election Employees in all other states of India.
They also demanded constitution of DPCs and consider due promotions of the election Assistants (Junior and senior scale), reservation of Dy DEO posts, separate election commission and revoking of the 2015 downgrading of the sanctioned posts of senior election assistants and restore the same to actual original sanctioned strength(87 posts) in J&K.
“And one more important demand is regarding Electoral Roll Management (ERM) operator who have been ousted without serving any legal notice. The operators have a great contribution and we demand they should not be ousted at all and the government should recognize their services,” they said. (GNS)
