The Hindu

• Demands that suspension be revoked and salary paid
• Suspension based on frivolous grounds, allege protesters
• Memorandum submitted to president of taluk panchayat

Mangalore, Mar 13: Members of the Ambedkar Nagar unit of the Karnataka Dalit Sangharsh Samiti (B Krishnappa group) staged a demonstration in front of the Malavoor Gram Panchayat near here on Monday. They were protesting against the suspension of Bharathi, a Dalit worker at the gram panchayat. They demanded that her suspension be revoked immediately and that she be paid her salary.

Organising secretary of the unit Yadava said that Bharathi had gone on leave on health grounds after getting sanction from the authorities. However, based on certain allegations made against her, the authorities dismissed her from service on October 11 last year.

On an appeal from her against the order, Chief Executive Officer of the Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat A M Kunjappa had stayed it,  Yadava said.

He said Kunjappa had then ordered that Bharathi be reinstated and paid her salary, but she was suspended again on January 8 on "frivolous grounds." Claiming that this was a gross injustice done to a person who had served at the panchayat for the last 12 years, he demanded that the authorities take steps to correct the situation.

The protesters also demanded that the gram panchayat take immediate steps to remove a poultry shop that had come up at the Siddharthnagar shopping complex in the Malavoor rehabilitation colony. They alleged that the panchayat authorities had permitted the shop to come up in violation of the norms. The shop owners had also encroached on the ground of a school in order to set up a store for live poultry, they alleged.

While officials of the unit had threatened at a press conference on Saturday to lock up the gram panchayat office so as to register their protest on these two issues, they did not do so. Instead, the agitators submitted a memorandum to president of the Mangalore Taluk Panchayat Ranganath Shetty, who arrived at the scene of the protest, urging him to intervene.