A police officer interacting with a group of migrant labourers in Karur district on Sunday.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Alleging an ulterior motive of communal and divisive forces to divide the workers by creating panic among migrant workers in Tamil Nadu, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) on Tuesday urged them to be alert to “conspiratorial moves”.
In a statement issued here, CITU general secretary Tapan Sen said a video of migrant workers from Bihar allegedly getting severely beaten up in Tamil Nadu created anxiety and concern among the people of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and other States.
“It has also created panic among the migrant workers, especially those from north India working in Tamil Nadu. This has apparently been circulated by the BJP-led forces with an ulterior motive to get political mileage out of it,” Mr. Sen said.
He said the Tamil Nadu government and its police department swiftly acted and found that there was no such incident had happened and filed cases against those who had created the panic. “Those include the BJP Tamil Nadu president and one of the party’s Uttar Pradesh spokesman. The CITU strongly condemns this heinous act and demands an exemplary punishment to the guilty,” Mr. Sen said.
He said the BJP had betrayed the migrant workers by repealing the Inter-State Migrant Workers Act, 1979, while codifying the labour law and done away with the protections and legal rights to the migrant workers at the time of the pandemic. “The CITU demands strict implementation of the Act throughout the country by all State governments,” he added.