Cops thwart TSCSEA meet

​Mahbubnagar: The police on Thursday disrupted the meeting of Telangana State Contributory Employees’ Association (TSCSEA) citing law and order problems.

Earlier, the police had granted permission to conduct the TSCSEA meeting to discuss the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and accordingly, the organisers made necessary arrangements and were about to begin the meeting at the Crown Function Hall in the district.

However, the police all of a sudden cancelled the permission for the meeting in the last minute and removed all chairs, posters and even stopped the employees from entering the meeting hall.

When contacted, Stita Pragna, president of TSCSEA, said the police cancelled the meeting all of a sudden and were playing in the hands of the government and they were behaving undemocratically by stamping the constitutional rights of peaceful assembly and meeting of people.

“We are all government employees and had taken prior permission to conduct a meeting with the teachers and the MLC candidates to discuss the issue of Contributory Pension Scheme.

But the police had played spoilsport by cancelling and disrupting our meeting even before it began, citing intelligence reports and claimed that it would lead to law and order situation. This is totally undemocratic and against the democratic rights of employees,” said Stita Pragna.

According to TSCSEA secretary Srikanth, there have been 200 deaths of teachers and about 1,000 teachers in the district have been deprived of pensions.

“The families of these employees are facing tough time because of lack of proper benefits in terms of persons or adequate compensation to the families of the dead,” he said.

As part of the meeting on Thursday, the TSCSEA had invited all 12 contesting MLC candidates to the meeting to discuss the Contributory Pension Scheme.

The leaders suspect political rot in the move. They said that Finance Minister Eatala Rajender had defended the CPS scheme strongly in the Assembly while MLAs, teachers and employees were opposing at the ground level.

TRS MLC Katepalli Janardhan Reddy was also present at the venue and was to participate in the meeting. “We want the State government to come clean on the issue and bring in new systems as adopted by the some of the North Eastern States where the State governments are following same old pensions system and protecting their employees,” said Pramod, spokesperson of TSUTF.