… And a pledge not to

Mukesh Bhardwaj explains why everyone in Haryana is wooing the Jats

Around 1,100 employees of Hindustan Antibiotics, Pimpri, have decided not to vote in the assembly elections as they have been denied their salaries for the past 10 months. HA, described in textbooks as the country’s first penicillin unit, was started at the initiative of Jawaharlal Nehru, who inaugurated it in 1956.

The employees have launched a “Save HA campaign”. “Production has come to a standstill. The company has no working capital. The Centre is not releasing a Rs 500 crore revival package,” said Sunil Pataskar, general secretary of the Hindustan Mazdoor Sangh. “In view of the apathy of the central government, the Ministry of Chemical and Fertilisers and leaders of various political parties, we have decided not to vote and draw attention to our plight.”

Personnel manager T Das conceded the company has struggled to pay salaries as it has no funds. “We do not have even have a working capital. Our dues in PF, sales tax and income tax have gone beyond Rs 100 crore,” he said. Sources said Rs 8 crore recently received for upgrade of machinery was used for paying pending salaries.

Pataskar said the Mazdoor Sangh has met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who has promised to “do something” to revive the company. Newly elected Shiv Sena MP Shrirang Barne heads the Mazdoor Sangh. Earlier, it was headed by Supriya Sule and by Sharad Pawar before her.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More