APNGOs Call Off Samaikyandhra Strike, Resume Work

The Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Officers' Association has decided to temporarily call off ("suspend") its 66-day strike against the bifurcation of the state, following talks with CM N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday.

The APNGOs, who had gone on a strike in protest against the Centre's decision to bifurcate AP and form a separate Telangana state, will resume work today.

Over 4,00,000 state government employees belonging to the Seemandhra region decided to resume work for now after the CM assured them that he would write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking the Centre to follow the same procedure for the state's bifurcation as the one that was followed during the formation of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Answering a query on why the strike was only being "temporarily suspended", APNGOs president P Ashok Babu said, "It is true that the CM has assured us that he will stop the division for as long as he is in power. But where is the guarantee that they will allow him to remain in power? We therefore want a clear assurance from the Union home ministry that our concerns will be addressed and that the division will be stalled."

The strike by the APNGOs had disrupted the life of people in the Seemandhra region, with most public services run by the State staying shut for the past 66 days.

The NGOs suffered, too - they did not get paid for the period of the strike, with a total of Rs. 2,700 crore worth salaries not collected by them. While Babu said that getting paid for the strike period was not a demand of theirs - their objective was solely to keep the state united, he averred - the state government is expected to treat the period as leave.

The CM had earlier also been successful in ending the strike by teachers, and by RTC and Secretariat employees, by holding talks with them, too.