Displaced anger erupts in Bokaro

The festering issue of jobs for the displaced reared its ugly head at Bokaro on Wednesday as descendants of land-losers of the steel plant set up in the 1960s beat up a senior employee and breached the canal that gives water to the PSU giant, which in turn supplies water to lakhs of people in Bokaro and Chas.

Descendants of the displaced, who have prepared a list of 25,000 names they claim are eligible for jobs in Bokaro Steel Limited (BSL), are demanding immediate employment for 20,000. However, the management of the plant, set up on 37,000 acres, which was supposed to give jobs to 6,000 land-losers according to an original estimate, has over the decades given jobs to more than 14,000.

Though the management said it wanted negotiations, on Wednesday, some 1,000 agitators, including women, did not allow that to happen, when they turned up at Tupkadih, 12km from the city, armed with sticks, spears, bows-and-arrows and axes.

While agitators chanted slogans demanding the release of their leader, Gulab Chand, arrested by Sector IX police on Tuesday evening for taking out a rally for jobs, things took an ugly turn when some women protesters got up and charged towards a BSL senior employee and started abusing and slapping him.

As the policemen on duty at the site watched silently, the women slapped a horrified M.P. Baxi, the AGM of the personnel department, who had been sent by his bosses to broker talks with protesters.

When a few male protesters joined in, the police, including DSPs Ajay Kumar and Sunil Kumar, hurriedly escorted the BSL official to a jeep.

But, by then, tempers had flared up. Among agitators, scores of youths divided themselves into groups and attacked the 34km-long canal, owned by state water resource department, which takes Rs 48 lakh a year from BSL to maintain it. As the canal was breached at four points, gallons of water spilled to nearby fields while the number of protesters swelled to prevent repairs.

They also raised provocative slogans saying if the displaced didn't get jobs, they would "chop off the heads of BSL officials". Chand, brought to the site by the police for talks with BSL, was equally unrepentant. "Till we get jobs, our guerrilla war will go on," he said.

Calling the assault on Baxi "unacceptable and untenable", BSL executive director Atul Srivastav also refused to have talks. When Chas SDO Manju Swansi requested the BSL director for talks, he refused saying when officials are attacked what was the point.

Till the time the report was filed, thousands of agitators are standing vigil near the canal, preventing Tenughat engineers from undertaking repairs. Over a 100 people, including Chand, were taken into custody at camp jail in Sector IV.

If protesters don't allow the canal's immediate repair, Bokaro steel city, already facing water rationing - two-hour supply in 24 hours - will stare at a major crisis. BSL receives 18,000 cubic feet water per hour from the canal.

BSL chief of communications Sanjay Tewary has condemned Wednesday's attacks.