Nainital ,Sep 18 : It is said about Uttarakhand that the state is run by bureaucracy. There are many tales of officers and ministers getting entangled with the ministers, how the officers of the state also mock the court orders, it is seen by seeing the case of Ramesh and Babita Valmiki. After winning the case of minimum wages in the High Court, when these two cleaners reached the DM in the hope of following the order, they got the same rebuke. After this, the District Magistrate of Nainital issued an order to increase the salary of both of them by 5 rupees, while the High Court ordered them to pay the minimum salary.
If Ramesh works as a cleaning worker in Tehsil since 1990, Babita has
been doing the same work for more than 10 years. Many times, they appealed to
the administration to increase the salary to only Rs. 1200 per month, because
the other workers who do the same work get many times more salary from them.
The Pay Commission has no meaning for them and their fight was for the minimum
wage.
When the administration did not listen to these employees, they decided to
fight the case against this injustice by borrowing and reached the High Court
seeking justice.
When the High Court ordered them to pay minimum wages, both the cleaners felt that they had won this war of justice. Till then, he probably did not know the power of bureaucracy. When the High Court orders reached the district administration, District Magistrate Vinod Kumar Suman called them both and reprimanded them and issued an order to raise Rs 5 per hour, which was directly in violation of the High Court order. Babita said that the work time is only three hours on paper, in reality they are used throughout the day.
According to the government employees, DM is the largest officer in the district. Perhaps that is why no one would have expected that he would raise his voice against the administration, nor that he would win the expensive judicial process. But for Ramesh and Babita, now this fight is also with justice as well as self-respect. Their lawyer Ganesh Kandpal said that the DM’s order will be challenged again in court and this case will continue till justice is granted.
