Chandigarh, March 30 (IANS) After the assurance by Punjab Revenue Minister Bram Shanker Jimpa, revenue employees on Wednesday called off their statewide strike and assured the minister to resume their work.
At a meeting with the Punjab Revenue Officers Association here, the minister assured representatives of the association that all their demands will be considered sympathetically, while asking them to immediately join their offices in larger public interest.
Jimpa said the state government has been committed for the welfare of the employees and their demands will be taken up with the Chief Minister to resolve them.
The employees went on strike to protest against keeping a naib tehsildar and a few patwaris in captivity in Lambi sub-tehsil office for nearly eight hours by farmers belonging to the Bharti Kisan Union Ekta Ugrahan.
The minister and his son are accused in the October 3 incident in which nine persons, including four farmers, were mowed down by SUVs. The minister's son Ashish Mishra has already been arrested.
It's likely that Sidhu will put forth the list of demands in the Punjab government as he is upset with the appointments in the government. He has resigned from the post of state president, but it has not been accepted yet by Sonia Gandhi. The meeting gains significance as it comes ahead of the CWC meeting.
The civil secretariat houses the top offices of the government, including those of the Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha and his advisors. Police tried to intervene to restrain the mourners from carrying out the sit-in outside the civil secretariat.
"My son will go to the police tomorrow and assist the probe. He has not escaped anywhere," Mishra said on his arrival in Lucknow. He said that his son was very much in their house in Lakhimpur.
Punjab Congress President Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday proceeded on indefinite fast in support of his demand for action against Ashish Mishra, the son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra and main accused in Sunday's violence in which nine persons, including four farmers, were killed.
Following a tipoff, the DRI sleuths swooped on the port on October 4 and detected the huge narcotics contraband, valued at Rs 125 crore, among boxes of a cooking oil container arriving from Iran and are now probing the possibility of a bigger drug smuggling racket with international ramifications for India and other countries.
