The Hindu : Ordinance issued for mass dismissal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 05, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Ordinance issued for mass dismissal

By Our Special Correspondent

Chennai July 4. Getting tougher with the staff and teachers on the third day of their strike, the Tamil Nadu Government today promulgated an ordinance providing for summary, mass dismissal of the strikers. Introducing another stringent feature to the Tamil Nadu Essential Services Maintenance Act, the ordinance empowers authorities to slap any major penalty including "dismissal" or break in service without conducting any enquiry.

According to the ordinance, if any government servant absents himself or herself from duty, he or she is deemed to have participated in the strike and explicitly admitted to have committed a "misconduct". And, the authorities need not even serve separate dismissal orders; they could dismiss the employees by merely putting up the information on the notice board of their office or in any newspaper, says the ordinance issued by the Governor, P.S. Ramamohan Rao, this morning. Interestingly, it gives retrospective effect to the new ESMA provisions from April 23 this year.

Official sources say several thousand staff members, including 4,000 Secretariat employees, especially union office-bearers, are likely to be axed tomorrow under the amended Act.

But the staff members "penalised or dismissed'' under the new provisions can approach the appointing authority for revocation or modification of the orders within one week of the slapping of the penalty. They should prove that their non-reporting for duty was not due to their participation in the strike but for "bona fide" reasons. If the employees are not satisfied with the orders, they can then approach within two weeks the "appellate authority", whose ruling will be final, says the ordinance.

Over 1,700 arrests

Even as the authorities armed themselves with the powers for "mass dismissal", the arrests under the ESMA continued and crossed the 1700-mark. Five of the arrested persons were released on health grounds.

In Madurai, an employee, who scaled a wall to get away from the police, who barged into a secret union meeting, sustained a spinal chord injury and was admitted to hospital.

Meanwhile, it was another day of anguish for the Secretariat employees, who took part in the first day of the strike but returned to work yesterday and today, as they were not only not allowed to sign the attendance but they also faced dismissal under the ESMA.

As the Secretariat staff are perceived to be the "backbone of the strike", the Government has asked department Secretaries to invoke the ESMA against all employees, who participated in a demonstration in the Secretariat complex on July 1 and kept off on July 2. An agitated group of women staff members, especially from the Finance department, trooped into the Finance Minister, C.Ponnaiyan's office, and pleaded that they be allowed to sign the registers. But the Minister is stated to have given no assurance, but only a "lecture" on the fiscal situation in Tamil Nadu.

The Government also asked heads of departments and Collectors to "freeze the attendance registers" as on July 3 and not to allow those who turned up for duty today to sign attendance.

Meanwhile, the Madras High Court, hearing a petition challenging the ESMA, advised the Government to stop midnight arrests and also asked the staff unions to "agitate the issue before the competent forum", instead of resorting to a strike.

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What the ordinance says