Subramanian Swamy had bought 51 per cent of the shares of the publication in 1993.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy (Photo: PTI)
Thrissur: BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who has cornered Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, has been accused of cheating the former employees of the locked out Malayalam newspaper Express here, of which he is the chairman.
Some 160 former employees of the paper which has remained closed for the last 15 years have accused him of denying them the statutory benefits.
They said that Mr Swamy had bought 51 per cent of the shares of the publication in 1993. Thereafter, the management withheld the gratuity to the retired employees and stopped PF and ESI contribution to the authorities concerned. They were not also paid salaries of several months.
“In 1996, we came to know that the company was not making payments to the ESI as some of our workers were denied treatment. In 2000, the company was locked out. For the last 15 years, no action was taken on our complaints submitted to the PF Commissioner, ESI Director and Labour Commissioner. We have decided to move the High Court on the issue within a week,” Mr P. Ajithkumar, Express unit’s secretary of Kerala Newspaper Employees Federation said here on Thursday.
In an interview to a national news channel in 2014, Mr Swamy had said that the publication would be resumed soon. “We are waiting for the newspaper to restart production and get the statutory benefits at the earliest,” he added.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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