Revenue employees throughout Telangana on Friday boycotted work and took part in lunch-hour demonstrations at their offices, expressing solidarity with their two women colleagues in Jagtial district who were booked by police following suicide by a farmer on the charge of bribery in mutation of land.
The agitation was called off later in the day after Jagtial Collector A. Sharat and Superintendent of Police Anant Sarma met leaders of the Telangana Revenue Employees Service Association in Jagtial and the Telangana Tahsildars Association called on Chief Secretary S.P. Singh here. Both associations were assured that booking of criminal cases against employees in future would only be with the approval of district Collectors concerned.
Revenue Employees Service Association president Matam Sivasankar said the staff would on Saturday resume land purification work which was stopped on Friday.
He said the entire workforce from attender to tahsildar in all districts boycotted work on Friday and staged lunch-hour demonstration in their offices.
Mr. Sivasankar said the Collector and SP, at their three-hour-long meeting, promised to exempt Tahsildar Suma and Village Revenue Officer Srilatha from the cases.
In Hyderabad, the Chief Secretary said cases against government employees would be booked only with prior permission of Collectors, said tahsildars association founder president V. Latchi Reddy.
In Peddapalli and Jagtial districts, revenue employees attended duties wearing black badges from Thursday in protest against the issue of charge-memos to 12 tahsildars in Peddapalli district and registration of criminal case against a tahsildar and a VRO.
Revenue officials and other TNGO leaders had gone in a procession to the Collector’s chamber and requested withdrawal of the charge-memos, as it would hamper their career prospects with denial of promotion and increments. But the in-charge Collector had asked the revenue officials to give a written explanation to the charge-memos so that he could examine the issue.
