Rakeshwar Pandey, Ambuj Thakur and K K Tripathy arrested, quarantined at Bistupur hotel

Jamshedpur: Intuc leaders Rakeshwar Pandey, Ambuj Thakur and K K Tripathy have been arrested and quarantined by the district administration in a Bistupur hotel.

These Intuc leaders have been arrested for having organised a rally without permission and for not maintaining social or physical distancing.

These Intuc leaders have been booked under sections 188, 269, 270 and section 51 B of DM Act by the Bistupur police. An FIR has been registered against these leaders in this connection. Soon after the arrest, Rakeshwar Pandey and Ambuj Thakur were sent to a Bistupur Hotel for paid quarantine. K K Tripathy has been sent to Nepal Building, Telco Quarantine Centre.

The health department will collect blood samples from all three tomorrow morning.

Today’s rally went horribly wrong for Rakeshwar Pandey, who has recently been nominated as state Intuc president. He was already facing opposition within his union.

With a view to consolidate his position he took out a workers’ rally from Ambagan to DC office. Several other Intuc leaders also took part in the rally. CITU and AITUC were also supporting the rally. Therefore, the rally was called as one organised by Joint Trade Union Morcha Rally.

The rally saw a show of a lot of enthusiasm from the participants. However, ignoring the need to follow the social distancing norms caused problems for them. When the rally reached the DC office, the ADM (law and order) Nand Kishore Lal saw the open violation of rules and directives of the state government. He chided the Intuc leaders and indicated that action might be taken against them. He also did not allow anyone to enter the DC office. He, however, received their memorandum outside the office. Even Rakeshwar Pandey was not allowed to reach the chamber of DC.

Sources said that no permission was sought from the district administration for the rally. The administration may take action for this.

Those who attended the rally included Raghunath Pandey, TWU president R Ravi Prasad, Usha Singh and Nitish Raj.

The Intuc leaders were demanding that the minimum wages be increased to Rs. 21 thousand per month and a minimum pension of Rs. 3000 be paid to all workers after their retirement.