Despite several hurdles and arrests made to scuttle the ‘Chalo Assembly’ protest led by members of the Federation of Andhra Pradesh State Teachers’ Organisations (FAPTO) to pressure the government to withdraw the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), the agitation was a grand success, claimed the Federation’s chairman P. Babu Reddy and secretary general G. Hrudayaraju, on Wednesday.
They said over 10,000 members started from their respective destinations to take part in the protest, and 4,000 of them could reach Vijayawada. They said the CPS gave no guarantee of pension after retirement and thus, they had been demanding that the government scrap the scheme and revive the old one.
They said 1,84,000 teachers and other employees were at the receiving end of the police high-handedness.
To thwart their protest, the police were deployed to confine the FAPTO leaders to house arrest at the district and mandal levels on Tuesday itself and at bus stations and railway stations on Wednesday, they said, alleging that this was against democratic norms.
The leaders said despite the hurdles, thousands of protesters managed to reach the Tummalapalli Kalakshetram in Vijayawada, from where they were arrested and bundled into police vans and shifted to various police stations across Krishna district.
Many of those arrested were women, they said. The leaders reiterated their demand that the government pass a resolution in the ongoing Assembly session on cancellation of the CPS in its present form and bring back the old pension system. Later, at a meeting they held, it was decided to register strong protest against the manner in which their protest was scuttled by the police, by sporting black badges on Thursday by teachers and employees in every district, mandal and town.
