As union factions battle, Sena claims the spoils

MUMBAI, September 27: Election results are almost always followed by charges and counter charges between the two contesting camps. And th...

MUMBAI, September 27: Election results are almost always followed by charges and counter charges between the two contesting camps. And the election to the 2,400-strong Mumbai Junior College Teachers Union (MJCTU) held on Saturday were no exception.

Around 40 per cent of the 1,000-odd teachers who voted plumped for fresh faces to head the union, a reflection of the members’ dissatisfaction with the way in which leaders have steered the agitation for revised pay scales.

But even as the camps within the unions A J Singh, new MJCTU president, versus R S Shukla, losing candidate tussle it out, the fact remains that the real challenger to the union’s relevance and bargaining power is the Maharashtra Rajya Shikshak Sena (MRSS), the Shiv Sena’s teachers’ wing. The MRSS, which was part of the agitation, recently struck a deal with the state government over payscales. Says S M Paranjape of the Shukla camp who lost the general secretary’s post to M R Andhalkar: “Our candidates had 40 per cent of the vote, whichspeaks volumes for the failure of the leadership.

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Though the same people are back at the helm, we will continue to focus on our issues.” Added a teacher, “For months, we were made to believe that the government would yield to our demands, but in vain.”

The withdrawal of the agitation and subsequent moves were decisions of the Maharashtra Federation of Junior College Teacher’s Organisations (MFJCTO), the umbrella body of junior college teachers’ unions, countered Andhalkar, who is also MFJCTO vice-president. The points in the Shukla camp’s manifesto are nothing new and, in fact, are either borrowed from the federation’s manifesto or are redundant in the present situation, he said. The MFJCTO has already been demanding a separate identity for junior colleges and the immediate, unconditional release of salaries during the strike period. The demand that rules regarding reservation of posts be strictly implemented has been met with satisfactorily, he stated.

The demand for reduction of class strength to80 was something even the Bombay University and College Teachers Union, of which Paranjape was a member till recently, have remained unfulfilled, said Andhalkar. In that case, Paranjape should not have raised this demand in the manifesto, he added. The opposition’s allegation that the union’s office-bearers were incurring unnecessary expenditure on mobile phones was baseless as both he and Singh foot their own bills, stated Andhalkar.

Even as the camps slug it out, the MRSS is questioning the very locus standi of the federation, saying it is not registered. “The MRSS has 28,000 junior college teachers as members in the state and is the umbrella organisation,” bragged its president, Prabhakar Desai. He also claimed that the state government would soon be making the MRSS’s agreement public. If so, MFJCTO will see one of its main demands, that of a three-tier pay scale, being quashed by MRSS’s demand for a two-tier scale. Commented Paranjape, “The MRSS is part of the government’s gameplan to weaken ourunion.” But whether the union will be weakened by a rival union or internal contradictions remains to be seen.