The issue of victimisation of a whistleblower by the management of Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) is far from being resolved. After the unsuccessful talks between the union and management on Thursday, the union has declared one-day strike across all the branches of BoM on June 17 and has given a call of agitation to all unions from other banks across the country on the same day.
On June 13, >The Hindu>exposed how Devidas Tuljapurkar, a union leader of BoM has been chargesheeted and faces possible dismissal for publishing a poem in the union’s house magazine in 1994. Mr. Tuljapurkar was allegedly been victimised for raising an alarm against the questionable corporate advances of the bank, by writing a letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor D. Subba Rao.
On Thursday, the Regional Labour Commissioner, Mumbai held a conciliation meeting between the management and the union. “The management remained negative despite the forceful and effective intervention by the RLC. Our offer to diffuse the agitation and sort out the issues by mutual discussions was also spurned off by the management,” told CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary, All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) to The Hindu .
He said that the meeting ended in a failure without yielding any positive result as the management persisted with their vindictive approach and left no room for any possible solution.
“As per our advice, the All India Bank of Maharashtra Employees Federation is going ahead with its all India strike on June 17,” he said. All branches of BoM across the country will face shutdown for one day in protest against the victimisation of a union leader for exposing bank’s wrong deeds
The AIEBA has called upon all its bank unions to extend full support to the striking employees by sending the protest letters to Narendra Singh, Chairman of BoM, RBI and the Finance minister.
