No justification for Kashmir employees’ strike: court

SRINAGAR - The Jammu and Kashmir High Court Tuesday ruled that there was no legal or moral justification for the government employees to go on strike and told the state government to take appropriate action against the striking employees if they disrupted essential supplies here.

Delivering a landmark judgment on a public interest litigation filed before it, a division bench of Justice Hakim Imtiyaz Hussain and Justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar said: “There is no fundamental, legal or statutory right for an employee to go on strike.”

“There is also no moral or equitable justification for employees to proceed on strike and go on extending it.”

The court held that the right of the people as a whole cannot be subservient to the claim, even if genuine, of an individual or only a section of the people. This has been well settled now by the Supreme Court in its various judgements, it noted.

“The state shall take all measures to maintain essential services like electricity, water supply etc. If such a call has been given for disruption of power supply, the government shall take necessary steps to meet the situation besides taking legal action against those employees who have given such a call.”

The state government employees across Jammu and Kashmir have been on strike for the last ten days, demanding payment of arrears following hike in salaries on the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission and for raising the retirement age from the present 58 to 60 years. They had extended their strike to April 17 Monday.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had offered talks and asked the employees to return to their duties.

Meanwhile, reports from Jammu said the employees working in the civil secretariat in the winter capital have called off their strike from Tuesday following the chief minister’s assurance to sympathetically address their demands.