Notes of a footnote :
The beginning of an ordeal
An
account of happenings before , during and years after an indefinite fast of a wordsmith
We knew that the United News of India management was preparing to take punitive measures against the employees who
were in forefront of the agitation against the UNI sale deal. Com Siddhu used
to tell over phone that the management was very annoyed with me
and they would take some actions against me. But much before me they served show cause notices to my nine
colleagues in Delhi
for their peaceful protest against ‘illegal’ entry of Mr Subhash Chandra in our Head Office premises at 9, Rafi Marg , New Delhi on October 3,
2006 - despite Delhi High Court’s stay order on transfer of UNI
shares to Mr Chandra’s private investment firm - Mediavest. The management, however, did not take further
actions immediately against them and at one point of time it seemed that such
notices would be withdrawn. The General Manager Mr M K Lal himself hinted that
in one of his meetings with the Joint Action Committee ( JAC ) leaders on November 1, 2006, the day I was served his
order dated October 30,
2006 transferring me from Mumbai to a far away place , Agartala.as a manager in a bid to deprive me rights of a trade union worker.
I knew that the UNI
(Mumbai) regional manager Mr. Surinder Arora was called by the management to Delhi for confabulations
so as to firm up the nature of punitive action against me. Mr Arora himself gave a broad hint for that
to me in his reply to my customary SMS to greet him on the occasion of Dipawali
festival. I have never been a student of cryptography and yet did not fail to
understand that his SMS sent at 1128 hrs on October 23, 2006 was a veiled warning to me.
The SMS read
“Namaskaar. Life &
Teacher are different from each other. Teacher teaches lessons and then takes
exam but Life takes exam first and then teaches lessons! Wishing you and Your
Family Very Happy & Prosperous Diwalee”.
Meanwhile, a couple
of my colleagues in Mumbai told me that Mr. Arora made a sort of inquiry over
phone from Delhi from some staff in Mumbai as to ‘whether thee was any verbal
duel between me and one of my female reporter colleague , with whom I
and almost all the Union members had serious differences due to her unabashed
support to Mr. Subhash Chandra’s bid to takeover the UNI. I was curious to know
reasons for such an enquiry as I have always maintained respect for all my
female colleagues and have never entered into duel , verbal or otherwise , with any colleague, male or
female.
Mr. Arora came back
to Mumbai suddenly , two days before he rang up me to summon to his office in Bandra on November 1, 2006 to
handover me the transfer order at quarter past 4pm. I immediately took out a letter from my pocket - prepared in advance in anticipation - in
reply to the order and wanted to know how come a part-time legal correspondent
of the UNI in Mumbai Mr Aijaj Ahmed Ansari knew about my transfer before me as
he had told about it to one of my News Editor Mr Vinod Kapoor at the Press
Club, Mumbai the previous night. I came to know the reason later but Mr Arora
parried this query and said, “Entire India Knows about it”. When I asked him
why he did not contact me about his enquiry about my alleged bout with any lady colleague
he said,” I was asked by Delhi
not to contact you on this matter but I know you are not a fool to engage into
such things”. So I realized that that the management was besieged with a
perverted bias against me and this transfer order was the best it could use against
me.
Meanwhile , Mr Arora
, in consultation with Mr Ansari and his close neighbor and than PTI Mumbai Bureau Chief
Sunil Shivdasani had appointed a legal
firm , quite famous for fixing things on transfer and suspension orders and had obtained a caveat from the labour
court , Mumbai against my anticipated move to seek judicial relief, even before he served
me the transfer order.
Transfers orders are
not rare to me and this was the third one received by me in the last six years. And
my every transfer in last two decades has been attached with a sort of
complexity on the part of the management and yet I had never challenged it in a
court of law. But this time the case was altogether different as I as the
General Secretary of the state union and national federation of the State
Unions as well , had taken up a stand against large scale punitive transfers in
the organization which had not only entailed an average additional cost of
about Rs 50 lakhs per annum for the last 4-5 five years but also resulted in
‘splitting’ of family members of close to one hundred staff. Moreover, I knew I
was not important, my role in the agitation is and if the management succeeded in
its game plan to transfer me it would demoralize all the staff and our
agitation against Mr. Subhash Chadra will definitely suffer a body blow. So I
did not tell about it to even my wife and decided to fight against it in every
possible manner.
Even as my state
union called an emergency general body meeting the very next day to decide
future course of action on my transfer order, I left home for that with a
medium size bag with all what was required by me to start ‘indefinite fast” in
the office from the same evening. Yes, I did ask permission for
this from my Supreme leader Com Jaspal Singh Sidhu and he did not hesitate for a second to give
me green signal for that. Other Union leaders in Delhi were not in favour of my ’action’ and
said that if I did so it may give an excuse to the management to not to withdraw show
cause notices served to colleagues in Delhi.
But I and Com.Sidhu knew well that I would be foolishness on our part to expect the
management to show any sensitivity on this count.
Immediately after the
GBM all the Union members went to meet Mr. Arora in his chamber and asked
whether he as a bureau manager had given consent for that .I am told he replied
in negative and said, “We all know why he has been transferred”.
Meanwhile , I entered
into the Union/Rest Room of the office just before the sunset and told to
myself that now is the time to decide things on my own as I had asked my colleagues
to decide future course of action before sunset.
Mr. Arora was taken
aback when he was told that I had already started my indefinite fast. He tried
every trick to lure me to not to go ahead with this action or postpone it by at
least one day or to go along with him to Delhi
by the next available flight. I was wise
enough to understand his tricks and firmly replied that there was no need to
negotiate over my transfer as the management may withdraw it on its own. Moreover, it was not a personal case as I had
started fast on the issue of punitive actions against the employees.
Mr. Arora than
suggested me to sleep in night in his air-conditioned chamber to which I
readily agreed I told him that top left
leaders are to come to Mumbai and some of them may also visit me.
The next morning I sent an SMS to the than CPM General Secretary
Prakash Karat that read, " Com. I am on fast unto death in UNI Bandra (Mumbai)
office against repression of workers. Please support us. C.P.Jha /UNI.
He immediately sent
an SMS in reply that read,” We will do our best on the UNI issue. I am
concerned about your health. Prakash".
However, I never
expected Com Karat to visit the office to see me as I knew he had a very busy
schedule that day in Mumbai. So I thanked him silently for his kind words for
the UNI and concern for my health. But it was a pleasant surprise for me to see
him rushing inside our office. We had a very brief personal chat before he was
presented a bouquet by Mr Arora on behalf of the Union.
I requested him to say a few words to all the staff, waiting in the main hall
which he did readily.
Before Com. Karat,
another left leader, the CPI national secretary Atul Kumar Anjaan had visited
the office along with our old friend, Rakesh of the IPTA with a message from
his party to raise the UNI issue in Parliament .Scores of other leaders and
journalist friends also started visiting the office to express their solidarity
with our cause.
The next day, there
was a perceptible change in the body language of Mr. Arora and I knew that the
management was contemplating a counter action in the face of my fast.
Meanwhile, I asked my
colleagues to arrange a doctor to visit me so that I may obtain a medical
certificate to not to allow the management or police to forcibly end my fast.
They arranged a lady doctor who had opened up her clinic the same day in a
nearby market. I also requested my photographer colleague, Prashant Sawant to
take photographs of medical check up.
At around seven pm some policemen came to the
office and asked me reason for my fast. They came back along with a lady Senior
Police Inspector in plain clothes. She
asked me had I taken police permission to begin the fast. I told her that my Union had given written information to the office in this
regard and a copy of that was also sent to the police station. She asked me to
write a letter to the office with a request to withdraw my transfer order and
suggested to give illness of my wife for its reason. I asked her who told her
about my wife’s illness and flatly said all this has nothing to do or undo with
my transfer order. Mr Arora , however ,
himself drafted a letter with the
same request in a guarded language and gave me a printed copy of that to sign which I
immediately refused saying “ It is not true”. After this the lady inspector
asked me to come with her to the police station. I said “I shall not break the
law and will not do anything not permitted by law or police.”
We reached the police
station where I was asked to give a written letter to them with reasons for my
fast. After that the lady inspector told me. “If you wish , you may continue the
fast”. It was near midnight
and so I requested her to drop me at my office in her vehicle. She not only
agreed to that but also came with me to the UNI office on 5th floor
of the building which also houses Bandra Collector office.
To our utter
surprise, the office door was locked from inside and nobody out of five present
inside was willing to open the lock. Then the lady inspector contacted Mr Arora
on his mobile phone. We could hear Mr. Arora telling her; it is order from my
seniors in Delhi
not to allow him inside the office.
The lady inspector
retorted, I take orders from my senior and this is Mumbai where Delhi’s command with
regard to law and order situation was not applicable. If you are not allowing
me to drop him from where he was picked up by us , I shall also sit on dharna
with him and may call fire brigade to break the lock” As she had to go on her
‘round’ she asked me to wait for her
next round to the scene with a locksmith . She also asked her subordinates to
arrange water for me. On her next round she came in her uniform. But the office
gate lock did not take cognizance of
that and remained locked as before. I thanked her for her ‘human’ behavior towards
me before she left and started my sleeping arrangement on the verandah. I,
however, could not sleep the entire night wondering about ‘inhuman’ behavior of
my bosses who are supposedly journalist by profession and a very kind behavior
of a police officer, whom the society at large regards as brutal by nature.
So long as I remained
on the fast, the lady inspector took care to be in touch with me either in
person or through mobile phones. She also arranged a security person as an
escort for me .Her duty hours had changed the next day. So, other police
officials came to the scene the next late afternoon along with Mr Arora to
break open the lock that had apparently got jammed as it had never been used
before.
On my fifth day of the fast , Shree D P Tripathi , who
happened to be the National General Secretary of the than ruling Nationalist Congress
Party(NCP) in Maharashtra and was my senior at Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU) in New Delhi came to the UNI office to see me. He regretted ‘police
action’ against me on behalf of his party colleague and the than State’s Deputy
Chief Minister Shree R R Patil, who held Home department.
On my sixth day of
the fast, I moved to Industrial
Court, Mumbai, located in the same building that
housed UNI (Bandra) office. My advocate was almost a novice and I was not only
very tired but all alone in the court. Even as I had given lot of documentary
evidences to my advocate in support of my contention that the transfer was bad
in law and had been ordered with a mala fide intention, he could not produce
any one of that in the court. The judge, however, accepted his request for the
next hearing.
The UNI management
had arranged several advocates and some staff members were also present in the
court to back up them. At the end of the first hearing the judge made it clear
he was not to issue any order as on that date.
The management’s
representatives and its advocates interpreted it as their victory and
vigorously shook hands with each other as if they had succeeded to ' kill' me. I
have read the story of Abhimanyu in Mahabharata who was killed inside a
Chakravuuha as he was not aware of how to come out of it after entering into
that . I told myself silently, I shall not allow them to kill me in their
Chakravuuha.
A couple of hours
after that I received a phone call from Com Sidhu who mandated me to end the
fast in view of a ‘ personal appeal ’ of Com Karat following his and the CPI
leader Com. A .B . Bardhan’s meeting with the than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on the UNI
issue.
Meanwhile, my wife
had left Mumbai for Lucknow
for an urgent official work and my minor son was alone in the home. Even as I
could not win in anyway anywhere that day on any issue related to me or the UNI
as a whole, there was no valid reason to continue my fast. And so I decided to
‘discontinue’ it and informed it to my office and the concerned police station
in written with a lego-medial check up
by the same lady doctor after Pancham , son of a UNI
colleague offered me a glass of juice to end that six-day fast. # FootNotes
