By Fr. F. M. Britto

Raipur: Heavy police force spoiled a protests by their relatives demanding better facilities for their police members in Chhattisgarh capital Raipur.

Condemning the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party, president of the main opposition Congress party Bhupesh Baghel said, “Preventing police personnel and their families from holding their protest is the violation of their democratic rights.”

Since the police themselves cannot agitate, their kin on June 25 came to the streets demanding for them weekly offs, fixed duty hours, better housing facilities, and increase in allowances. Their 11 demands also included allowances for doing over-time duty, medical, laundry, mobile, ration and travel allowances.

The low rung police say they work for 14 to 16 hours a day and even more when there is necessity. On festival days they had to be on duty and there is no guarantee of weekly holidays. With no timing for their duties, they had to work from morning till evening and even late at night.

They get petty allowances. For instance, 100 rupees for food, 81 rupees as cycle allowance, 60 rupees as monthly washing allowance, 200 rupees medical allowance, and so on. They want to be treated like other government employees. Many live with their families in small and dilapidated apartments.

The police officers, on the other hand, reportedly get better benefits.

Home Minister Ramsewak Paikra not only rejected their demands but denied permission to hold the protest rally, saying that their demands had already been met. The minister had deployed the huge police force to control their kin.

This is the first time the relatives of the police personnel took to the streets in the eastern India state that was formed in 2000.

Chhattisgarh has about 70,000 police personnel.

The police had barricaded all the important roads and the railway station and checked all private vehicles on the previous day to prevent the entry of the police personnel’s kin, However, hundreds of them from far away districts landed Raipur, whisking the police. More women and elderly were reportedly present in the protest.

The police detained 81 women family members, reported the media. Action would be taken on the 732 families that took part in the protest on July 2 by the District Superintend of Police, said Dainik Bhaskar, a Hindi daily, on June 27.

The 150 odd activists belonging to the opposition Congress, former chief minister ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh and Bahujan Samaj Party, who supported the protest, also were detained, Prafulla Thakur, a police official briefed the press. They were all later released unconditionally.

The police personnel had earlier been briefed that if their families took part in the protest, action would be taken on the police themselves. It is alleged that written statement had been taken from the police that neither they nor their families would take part in the protest march.

But their wives told the media that they do not need the permission of their husbands. Some agitators allegedly told the heavy-handed police that they are fighting for their cause.

Many police personnel also have been served with show-cause notices for the protest by their family members in various places last one week.

The protest was initiated by police constable Rakesh Yadav of Bilaspur district, who had raised these issues in the social media about ten days back. He was dismissed from his service, arrested, a case filed and was denied bail.

The police are also investigating those who had spread the movement through the social media.

Since recently the state merged 180,000 panchayat and urban bodies’ shikshakarmies (teachers) into the cadres of school education department, the police personnel’s kin expected their demands would also be met, since the state goes for election at the end of the year.

It is said that the dismissals and suspension of many police personnel also had triggered the protest. And they had fanned the protest. Policemen also have been alleged to have contributed funds to make the agitation a success.