Bihar State Non-Gazetted Employees Association (Gope group), Bihar Secretariat Services Association and Bihar Non-Gazetted Employees Association organized a huge State level joint protest in front of the Chief Minister during the special session of the Assembly on 24 April 2017 on a 13-point charter of demands. The demands included the following: implementation of 7th Pay Commission for State employees and teachers from 1 January 2016 onwards; corrections of huge anomalies present in wage scales; contract, honorarium, incentive and outsourced workers working in government departments for a long time to be regularized and ending the contract-honorarium practice; equal pay for equal work as per SC direction; scrapping the new pension scheme and implementing the old pension scheme; Secretariat clerical services to be analogous to Central Secretariat clerical services; registration of contract workers’ unions; taking back of cases slapped on leaders and activists during political agitations; reinstating retrenched workers back into service; government employee status and respectable wages for anganwadi, rasoiya, ASHA, Mamta, literacy-workers.
The protest rally started from the public library complex and culminated in a meeting near Gardanibagh thana. Thousands of workers, men and women, participated in the rally and meeting, braving the scorching heat. A 13-point charter of demands was submitted to the deputed Magistrate with the warning that if the demands were not met by 10 June all workers in the Bihar Secretariat as well as across the State would be forced to go on an indefinite strike for which the government would be accountable.
