Hyderabad: The Telangana state government has decided not to take back on duty those RTC employees and workers who fail to report to duty by Tuesday midnight. The state government has firmed up its view that a good opportunity has been given by it to striking RTC workers to join duties before the midnight deadline.
It was now up to RTC workers and employees whether to join duties before the deadline or continue the strike and lose their jobs, and consequently put their families to hardships. The government has made it clear that if striking employees do not join duties before the expiry of the deadline, private buses would be given permits in remaining 5,000 routes also, and mark the end of an entity called TSRTC.
Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao held a review meeting on Monday, in the backdrop of the ongoing RTC strike and the High Court’s hearings and observations of the two-judge Bench on the matter.
A discussion was held to devise a counter-strategy. Advice was taken from legal experts on various scenarios. Labour laws and the central government’s Motor Vehicle Act were examined. The unanimous decision that emerged from the meeting was that deadline given to RTC employees to join duties would expire Tuesday midnight.
The future of workers and their families lies solely in the hands of employees, who must join work to protect their jobs. The labour department had already declared the ongoing RTC strike as illegal and submitted a report in this regard. Despite the strike being illegal, the government had acted with lot of benevolence and lenience.
If the opportunity given was not utilised, workers could not place the onus of blame on anyone else. If the workers do not join duties, the fault lies with them. The government had emphatically resolved that there was no question of taking back any employee back after Tuesday midnight.
The government would sternly implement its decision to give permits to private buses to ply in all remaining 5,000 routes. In fact, if workers fail to join duty by mid night, the government would start the process of issuing permits on the next day itself. Telangana would become an RTC-less state by midnight, if workers do not join, the meeting observed.
“Either way the High Court verdict goes, having come this far on the matter, either the RTC or the government would appeal against it in the Supreme Court. Once the case goes to the Supreme Court, the matter would be delayed further. Going by past experiences, the case may drag on for months or years to come, becoming a never-ending battle, which will do the workers no good,” the meeting opined.
