Tension prevails as police take protesting steel workers into custody in Visakhapatnam
The Hindu
Left parties criticise the arrest of peaceful protesters
Mild tension prevailed at the dharna site in Kurmannapalem in Gajuwaka, when police tried to arrest the leaders and members of Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee(VUPPC) and employees of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, who were staging a dharna against the privatisation of the plant, here on Saturday.
Keeping in view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day tour of Visakhapatnam, beginning Friday night, the VUPPC had given a call for mass boycott from work and had urged employees to come to the dharna site to express their protest, along with their family members.
In total about 500 members, a few with their family, were present at the site, when in the afternoon, police reached the site and arrested about 46 of them and sent them to Pendurthi police station.
The leaders of VUPPC and the Left parties who were arrested include Ayodhya Ram. Ch. Adinarayana, Stalin, Jaggu Naidu and Mantri Rajsekhar.
Later, in the day the police also took into custody CPI State vice-president J.V. Satyanarayana Murthy and a few other leaders.
“It was a peaceful protest and we have every right to express our protest, which guaranteed by the Constitution. Arresting and detaining the leaders, is undemocratic and condemnable,” said chairman of VUPPC Ch. Narasinga Rao.
The VUPPC has planned to organise a three-day mass protest from Friday and on Saturday they have lined-up a number of programmes, including holding meetings at the gate.
In 2021, five women from Mayithara, four of them MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) workers, found a common ground in their desire to create a sustainable livelihood by growing vegetables. Rajamma M., Mary Varkey, Valsala L., Elisho S., and Praseeda Sumesh, aged between 70 and 39, pooled their savings, rented a piece of land and began their collective vegetable farming journey under the Deepam Krishi group.