Kolkata, March 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) As a crucial hearing on the pending dearness allowance (DA) arrears for West Bengal government employees at the Supreme Court got deferred further on Tuesday, the joint forum of state government employees has decided to magnify the sting of their agitation.
Though the news of the deferment of hearing till April 11 was intially met with silence, the agitators soon broke out of their temporary slumber of weariness and announced their decision to continue their agitations on the streets of the city.
"The legal battle is just a part of our bigger movement in the issue. Besides payment of our DA arrears we have two additional demands. The first is recruitment of filling up the vacant post in a transparent manner and the second regularisation of the contractual staff. Our agitation on these issues will continue till our demands are fulfilled. The legal battle and the agitation on the streets will continue side-by-side in a parallel manner," said the joint forum convenor Bhaskar Ghosh.
He also said that in the next stage of agitation, similar sit-ins might be staged at New Delhi.
Senior advocate and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member, Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya assured the agitating employees that there is no room for frustration following the event of the hearing being deferred. "Hearing in the matter was deferred because of the pressure of too many cases on the apex court for the day. This is a normal matter both in the Supreme Court as well as in the high courts," Bhattacharya said.
This is the fifth time that the hearing in the matter has been deferred by the apex court. The first date of hearing was on December 5 last year, at the apex court's division bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice Dipankar Dutta. However, the hearing was deferred on December 14.
However, the matter could not be heard on that day as both the judges recused themselves. The next date of hearing was fixed on January 16. However, the hearing did not happen on that day as well since there were technical errors in the affidavit filed by the West Bengal government in the matter.
The new date of heating was fixed on March 15 and on that day the matter was deferred on March 21. However, on Tuesday the matter has been deferred again to April 11.
Source: IANS
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