Home India News Protests erupt after MCD sacks 799 library employees

Protests erupt after MCD sacks 799 library employees

By IANS,

New Delhi : Protests erupted Wednesday at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) Town Hall headquarters when Mayor Kanwar Sain announced the sacking of 799 “illegally” recruited library employees.

Police force had to be deployed to curb and control the enraged mob of employees who went about pelting stones and ransacking offices.

The mayor announced the decision to sack 799 employees of Hardayal Municipal Public Library at the Chandni Chowk headquarters in the afternoon, claiming that their appointment by the previous Congress authority was “illegal and void”.

Soon after that, around 400 protesters barged into the Town Hall premises, damaged the mayor’s car and smashed window panes of the heritage structure by throwing flower pots and stones.

An angry protester said, “If there was any irregularity, why did they keep us on the job for three years?”

Another shouted, “Why can’t they provide us other jobs now?”

According to the MCD, now ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the appointments were made between 2006 to 2007 by the Congress which headed the corporation then.

“Irregularities were found in an inquiry conducted by former additional district and sessions judge G.P. Thareja following a Delhi High Court order. We accepted the recommendations…the mass appointments in the library in the period are illegal and void in entirety and liable to be annulled since inception,” Sain said.

The inquiry found that the appointments were made despite unavailability of funds and Rs.3 million had been sanctioned “illegally and without jurisdiction”, Mayor Sain said.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Jai Kishan Sharma held that the manner in which the employees were sacked was unjust and that the “Congress would support the employees to move the Supreme Court”.

“These employees were recruited as per the actual procedure. The reason for the mass recruitment was because under the then mayor Farhad Suri, there was a plan to open branches of the library, one in each ward,” Sharma told IANS.

“The inquiry was purposely delayed and the inquirer was bribed. The BJP came to power two and a half years back. If there was no need for the staff, why not sack them then? They have brutally sacked them now without giving them pay for their two years of work,” Sharma said.