UP government employees call off strike

    By IANS,

    Lucknow: Over 16 lakh plus government employees in Uttar Pradesh withdrew their 10-day-old strike Friday and will resume their work from Saturday, an official said.

    The impasse was solved after intervention of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court which asked for an immediate end to the strike.

    Following this, the State Employees Joint Council announced in the court that all the state employees have agreed to withdraw the state-wide strike.

    The state government also accepted four demands from their charter of demands and assured the court that it was well disposed towards the employees and would consider their other demands in the coming days.

    On the request of the employees union, the court fixed Dec 3 for the next hearing and directed the stakeholders to brief it about the progress of dialogue between the state government and the employees.

    The bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachood and Justice R.R. Awasthi observed that the court hoped that the dialogue between the two sides would continue in the same spirit.

    The state employees had been on strike for the last ten days and had begun stalling health services after which the high court intervened and sought to thrash out a solution by asking the state chief secretary to initiate a dialogue.

    After the breaking of the deadlock Friday, the state government assured to look sympathetically into proceedings against striking employees after invoking of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) two days back.