Friends and family of trade unionist Sudha Bharadwaj allege jail authorities’ tampering of medical reports in an open letter, following Bombay High Court’s denial of Bharadwaj’s medical bail on Friday August 28.

Calling her latest medical report “misleading,” the letter said, “This dismissal of bail based on fallacious [sic] medical report is extremely disappointing to friends and family of Sudha Bharadwaj, who have been very concerned about her deteriorating health condition.”

In support of the dissidents presently in jail, over 70 organizations have issued a National Call for a week of protest from August 28, to demand the release of those arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case as well as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) protestors, journalists and to ask for the repeal of draconian acts like Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA.)

On June 11, Sudha Bharadwaj moved the Bombay High Court for a medical bail. As per her application, the sexagenarian suffers from diabetes, hypertension, and has a history of pulmonary tuberculosis, making her vulnerable to a Covid-19 infection. The application also said she suffers from a variation of arthritis that makes movement difficult.

In response, the Byculla Women’s jail authorities submitted a medical report on July 21 that confirmed the same. The report also showed that her aggravated hypertension put her at risk of a heart attack.  This was reiterated in a second medical report submitted on August 3 which has caused great concern to her family and friends. However, the third medical report on August 21 did not take note either of her heart condition or of her arthritis which it dismissed as “body ache.”

Daughter Maaysha Bharadwaj said the decision of the Division Bench is a travesty of justice. She said it is ironic that her mother who spent her lifetime helping the marginalized communities and upholding Constitutional rights is denied the basic right to bail, while those convicted of murder enjoy relaxed parole rules.

Like Bharadwaj, there are 12 well-known intellectuals, professors, writers etc in jail in connection with this case. 

Related:

Sudha Bharadwaj’s heart condition result of incarecration
Civil Society members request Maha CM to shift Bhima Koregaon activists out of jail  

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Image Courtesy: Live Law

Noted human rights activist, Sudha Bharadwaj has been granted temporary bail by the Bombay High Court from August 17 to August 20 to be able to attend her father Ranganath Bharadwaj’s last rites. Her father passed away on August 7. Sudha has been languishing in a Pune jail since October last year. She will be taken to Bangalore.

The Maharashtra police raided and arrested several prominent human rights activists in India on August 28 on the pretext of their alleged involvement in the Bhima Koregaon case. Following this, a writ petition was filed in the SC by eminent Indians such as historian Romila Thapar, economists Prabhat Patnaik and Devaki Jain among others. The SC disposed off the writ petition saying that the activists could avail relief from lower courts as per the law. All five activists-lawyers were under house arrest for a time period until October 26, a time period extended by the Supreme Court allowing them time to seek bail or other remedies in appropriate courts. Within minutes of the Pune court rejecting bail pleas of Adv. Sudha Bhardwaj, Adv. Arun Ferreira and activist Vernon Gonsalves, while Ferreira and Gonsalves were arrested immediately, Bhardwaj was arrested two days later.

Sudha Bharadwaj, born in 1961, has been associated with the trade union movement in Chhattisgarh for more than 25 years. She was the general secretary of the Chhattisgarh unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), and a member of Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS).

After living and working in Bilaspur for several years, Sudha had moved to Delhi recently and was teaching at National Law University Delhi as a visiting Professor, where she taught a seminar course on tribal rights and land acquisition, and a part of the regular course on law and poverty. As part of the programme of the Delhi Judicial Academy, she addressed the presiding officers of labour courts from Sri Lanka. Shock gripped parts of the country when this relentless defender of human rights was first faced with sudden raids and later arrested.
 

In March 2019, Sudha Bharadwaj was honoured by Harvard Law School. She is among 21 women honoured by the Harvard Law School this year through a portrait exhibition on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Bharadwaj was arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case in August and is currently in a prison in Pune.
 

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We are deeply concerned by the synchronized arrests of several human rights defenders and trade union leaders in different parts of the country on 28 August 2018 by the Pune police. The exact nature of the alleged unlawful activities of those arrested has not been made clear though they are booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The documents occasionally mentioned as evidence against them are of highly questionable authenticity more often than not appearing in the media rather than in the courts of jurisdiction.
 
They have all been at the forefront of the struggle to defend the democratic rights of various oppressed and marginalized sections of society. The conclusion is inescapable that what is being conducted is a witch-hunt against those who dare to take up the cause of the working class and downtrodden and who dare to oppose government policy and big industrialists.
 
One of those under arrest, Professor Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, has been a trade union leader in Chhattisgarh for the last three decades. She has been a part of the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS) since its founding. Through landmark struggles, both legal and on the ground, she has established a historical precedence by winning the long drawn out court battle for the regularization of contract workers in the cement industry in Chhattisgarh.
 
PCSS succeeded in obtaining a judgment for regularization of 573 contract workers in the Industrial Court at Raipur in 2006. Realizing the importance of legal aid for all working people, Professor Advocate Bharadwaj founded a lawyers’ collective called Janhit, and is also the general secretary of Chhattisgarh People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Vice President of the Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL), a collective that offers legal advice to the needy; and a member of Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS). Professor Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj is currently visiting professor at the National Law University Delhi (NLUD).
 
She has made extensive contributions to labour law, development, environment, women’s rights and access to justice. Despite her work on redressal of some of the gravest injustices in our country, she maintains an unwavering commitment to the vision of the Constitution and constantly emphasizes the use of constitutional methods in addressing injustice.
 
Professor Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj has been leading the fight against unlawful land acquisition and violation of labour laws by big industrialists and the government in courts and on the streets in Chhattisgarh. Her entire legal work is based on defending labour rights and civil and political rights of working people which are integral elements of Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining.
 
Her arrest is an attack on the right to defend labour and working people’s civil and political rights. Professor Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj’s arrest and the assault on her moral dignity through media creates a climate of violence, intimidation and insecurity both for her as well as for the organizations associated with her.
 
This is against the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on Freedom of Association and a grave violation of the Freedom of Association. According to the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association, the detention of trade unionists and lawyers who defend rights of labour and working people “for reasons connected with their activities in defence of the interests of workers constitutes a serious interference with civil liberties in general and with trade union rights in particular” and arrests of trade unionists “may create an atmosphere of intimidation and fear prejudicial to the normal development of trade union activities”.
 
These constitute serious attacks on trade union rights. We demand that the government immediately stop its vendetta against trade union leaders and human rights defenders, and recognise their value in protecting the rights of workers and the poor.
 
Signed by Amarjeet Kaur, Rajiv Dimri, K. Hemlatha, Animesh Das, AITUC AICCTU CITU IFTU
 

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Interview with Sudha Bharadwaj
Interviewed by Surangya Kaur Produced by Newsclick Team

PUCL National Secretary and visiting professor at NLU, Sudha Bharadwaj, talks to Newsclick about the recent allegations Republic TV made against her of being an urban Naxal. She also discusses the long drawn conflict in Chhattisgarh and how illegal land acquisitions and extrajudicial killings are adding fuel to the fire in the state. 

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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According to Republic TV, this committed and dedicated lawyer and activist is an “urban Maoist” who is “plotting to break India” with separatist groups and armed guerrillas across the country. The basis for the long list of scurrilous allegations and malicious insinuations against Advocate Bharadwaj is a letter purported to be written by her that Republic TV claims it has accessed.

The provenance of this letter is not revealed and we are not told how it came into the possession of Republic TV. The language of the letter is crude and clumsy, with the supposed author self-identifying as “Comrade Advocate Sudha Bharadwaj” and mentioning the names of various known and unknown individuals who are meticulously addressed as “Comrades”. The contents – or rather, what Republic TV claims are the contents – are supposed to establish a “sensational” connection between the Kashmiri separatists, “urban Naxals”, students from JNU and TISS, and others who take public stands against the anti-people policies of the state. According to Republic TV, these are “incontrovertible and unquestionable facts” that cannot be questioned.

Based on the telecast, the alleged letter belongs to the shoddy archive of similar “documentary proofs” that are regularly leaked to the press by investigation agencies eager to pin various “crimes” onto activists, leaders of people’s movements, political opponents, human rights defenders, critics of government policies and other citizens who are exercising their legitimate rights to free speech, dissent and political action.

The frenzied propagation by Republic TV of these concocted allegations and invented charges against known critics of the ruling party is clearly aimed at blurring the lines between evidence and allegation, accusation and proof, coincidence and causality in the mind of viewers who do not have access to multiple sources of information.

Equally dangerous is the creation and demonisation of virulent labels like “urban naxals” and “tukde-tukde gang”, which gain currency solely by virtue of insistent repetition and circulation despite being legally, factually and politically untenable.

The lethal consenquences of this shameless manipulation of public opinio​n​​ are today visible in the form of the targeted lynchings of Muslims, Dalits and others identified as criminals based on malevolent WhatsApp messages and videos.

Ludicrous though this attack on Advocate Bharadwaj may seem, it is also a signal of the widening dragnet being used to establish absolute control over all institutions and spaces of governance. We call on all responsible people to condemn and expose this attack as the latest attempt by the Modi sarkar and its embedded propagandists in the media to bypass democratic institutions, undermine the rule of law, stifle all voices of dissent and crush all those who seek to question or challenge their autocratic rule.

We also call on media bodies, professional associations and senior journalists to come out and condemn practitioners of this form of toxic, unethical and malicious “journalism”.

Nancy Adajania, curator and writer
Prof Amita Baviskar, Institute of Economic Growth
Dr Shilpi Bhattacharya, OP Jindal Global University
Prashant Bhushan, Advocate, Supreme Court of india
Dr Neera Burra, writer and historian
Prof Uma Chakravarthy, feminist historian
Anil Chamadiya, journalist
Prof CP Chandrasekhar, JNU
Anil Chaudhary, PEACE
Dr Yug Mohit Chaudhary, Advocate, Bombay High Court
Dr Vanessa Chisti, OP Jindal Global University
Maja Daruwala, Senior Advisor, Commonwealth Human Rights Network
Senior Advocate Mihir Desai, Bombay High Court
Saba Dewan, filmmaker
Deepa Dhanraj, Filmmaker
Professor Sabeena Gadihoke, AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, filmmaker
Prof Jayati Ghosh, JNU
Professor Shohini Ghosh, AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, filmmaker
Viji Ghosh, journalist
Colin Gonsalves, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Dr Smita Gupta, JNU
Prof Zoya Hasan, JNU
Ranjit Hoskote, curator and poet
Indira Jaising, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India and former Additional Solicitor General of India
Amar Kanwar, Filmmaker
Prof Ayesha Kidwai, JNU
Ritu Menon, publisher and writer
Dr Kalyani Menon-Sen, researcher and writer
Ravi Nair, SAHRDC
Farah Naqvi, writer and activist
Aditya Nigam, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Anand Patwardhan, Filmmaker
Pamela Philipose, journalist
Dr Imrana Qadeer, health activist
Annie Raja, General Secretary, National Federation of Indian Women
Vimala Ramachandran, Education Resource Unit
Aruna Roy, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan
Dunu Roy, Hazards Centre
Rahul Roy, filmmaker
Prof Abhijit Sen, JNU
Ardhendu Sen, IAS (retired)
Dr Jhuma Sen, OP Jindal Global University
Dr Rohini Sen, OP Jindal Global University
Dr Mira Shiva, health activist
Abhishek Srivastava, journalist
Dr Pankaj Srivastava, journalist
Prof Nandini Sundar, Delhi School of Economics
Prashant Tandon, journalist
Henri Tiphagne, People’s Watch Tamilnadu
Dr Achin Vanaik, writer and researcher
Dr Anish Vanaik, OP Jindal Global University
Anand Swaroop Varma, Editor Samkaleen Teesri Duniya
Prof Asghar Wajahat, writer, playwright and filmmaker
Nivedita Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru University
 

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Image: Indian Express
 
CESP has been organising the lecture since last 25 years. In an email communication dated March 5, the CESP informed that this year too, the Centre had decided after discussions to invite the eminent social scientist Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former member of the JNU faculty and President of the Centre of Policy Research, and current Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University to deliver the 26^th Krishna Bhardwaj Memorial lecture. However, the CESP faculty alleged that the current Dean of the School of Social Sciences chose to bypass the decision of the Centre and invited a different speaker, without any communication of the reason behind it and far from any sort of discussion.
 
The CESP faculty has decided in its meeting dated March 5, 2018 to go ahead with its planned activity and organise the 26^th KB Memorial lecture towards the last week of March by inviting the chosen speaker Pratap Bhanu Mehta. They also called for well wishers of CESP to join the lecture.
 
Additionally, it appears that Sudha Bhardwaj, the rights activist from Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarh High Court advocate, declined an invitation to the lecture. She said in an email dated March 3, “It has come to my notice that, departing from the process of organisation of all previous memorial lectures, this lecture has been organised bypassing the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning. Prof Krishna Bharadwaj was not only an eminent scholar but also a thorough democrat. It is unlikely that she could have approved of an administrative decision that was carried out without consultation with the institution that she spent decades of her life nurturing, namely the CESP”

She also expressed that even during the emergency, the centre stood out for its bold stands in favour of its autonomy and the welfare of its faculty and students and hence she regrets that she can not be part of the lecture in such situations.
 

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January 22, 2016 marks a watershed in a 25 year long struggle for contract workers in the ACC Jamul Cement Works (now Lafarge Holcim plant),Chhattisgarh when their union the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS) signed a settlement that is exceptional, on many counts.

For the past quarter of a century, the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS), a union affiliated to the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee), has been fighting a long battle on the streets and within the courts. The protests and legal action(s) have been against the hard conditions of work for the contract workers in the cement plant of ACC Jamul that violate both fundamental rights and the law. The ACC Jamul plant has kept its contract workers in dismal conditions in violation of the industry-wide Cement Wage Board Agreement.

In 2006 the Union won an order for the regularisation of hundreds of contract workers, which was partially upheld by the High Court in 2011, limiting the relief to approximately 120 workers who were still in service. Even this High Court Order could not be implemented. The reasons:an intransigent management that refused to even recognise, far from negotiate with the PCSS, and which grew even more powerful as it was incorporated into Holcim andthen LafargeHolcim, a multinational; a callous and toothless labour department; and a hostile, pro-corporate right wing state government.

Strikes and dharnas followed until the matter was dragged back into court. This dispute lay pending before a Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh.

In the year 2012, two things happened. First, the PCSS got support from the Global Federation IndustriALL and solidarity from Solifonds and Unia—international global solidarity organistaions for workers working in multinationals. The solidarity organisations filed a complaint against Holcim before the Swiss National Contact Point (NCP) of the OECD in Berne, Switzerland,pointing out that Holcim was disobeying the guidelines for multinationals by violating Indian labour standards and court orders, by refusing collective bargaining in good faith, and by violating the rights of the surrounding farming communities.

Second, and simulataneously, Holcim began constructing a huge, highly mechanised, state-of-the-art new expansion plant in Jamul, aimed for several times more capacity. It fondly imagined that after closing down the old plant and getting rid of its 1200 odd workers (and of course their Union too!) it would run this plant with some 90 highly trained workmen from outside. Right from the inception of this plant, PCSS began agitating for local employment and intervened several times for the rights of the thousands of construction labour engaged there.

After many delays and much procrastination, discussions actually began between the top management of Lafarge Holcim and the PCSS, following directions of the Swiss NCP, first in Berne and then, from 2014 onwards, in India. The negotoations threw up a difficult choice for the Union –(to push for )the benefits of regularisation and arrears to a small group of workers as directed by the High Court versus (negotiating for) minimising the retrenchment that was being proposed.

At this point the workers who were among the beneficiaries of the High Court order, showed a remarkable collective union spirit in giving up those benefits to push for maximum deployment of existing workers in the new and old plants with better working conditions; and the maximum compensation package with alternative livelihood support to those who were to lose jobs.

• Despite some discouraging rounds and many heated discussions, the PCSS team, led by its chief negotiator Ashim Roy of the NTUI, and the management, led by Behram Shirdewala, Chief People Officer, were able to persist and finally arrive at a settlement. This was despite the opposition of the local political class and vested interests, especially the 22 contractors and their 60 supervisors who were also to be rendered irrelevant in the whole process.

  The settlement (the copy of the settlement can be read) provides the following:

• Of the 932 contract workers, 536 of them would be deployed in the new and old plants – 212 of them at Cement Wage Board rates (about 4 times the minimum wage), 196 at 50% of the Cement Wage Board rates (twice the minimum wage) to be enhanced to full wage board rates in 2 years; and the remaining at 25% above minimum wages – to be enhanced to 30% above minimum wages after a year. (These workers were selected through a skill assessment process by the management which the union tried to keep as fair and transparent as possible.)
• The remaining surplus workers have been awarded 3 months of wage for every year they worked as compensation (in addition to their gratuity and other legal dues), thus getting packages ranging from over 20,000 for a worker who has worked for a year right up to around 4.5 lakh rupees for older workers.
• About 200 of these workers have put in less than 5 years, and another around 75 workers are over 55 years of age. Each such unmapped worker would be entitled to nominate one person from his family to get industrial training from the company’s training centre and support in placement.

 
For contract workers this marks an unprecedented breakthrough.

Neither the Union nor the workers can be happy about losing jobs. Particularly when it means venturing out of the protective umbrella of the Union into the ‘market’ where dignified employment is a far cry for the average working class Indian given the den of labour law violations that our industrial areas have become.
 
But, the painful and protracted consultations confirmed that the alternative of legal retrenchment with just one month’s pay –that too after further, endless legal battles –was probably the more painful choice.
 
The larger political issue of whether such labour – displacing technology is really needed, or should be our priority, needs to be fought for by the larger working class movement of which this union is only a tiny and not very powerful part.

For PCSS, this is the beginning of another round of struggle. To organise contract workers in other units of the cement industry and in other industrial areas; to give these workers a place to come to for solidarity when faced with multiple hardships– slum evictions, agrarian crises, atrocities against women or communal and targeted violence — and to develop a centre for a broader political education. Most of all to establish a co-operative society to save workers from the tentacles of money-lenders, these are the formidable tasks ahead. A detailed Timeline of the struggle in ACC Jamul can be read here:

This is the time to recall all those who helped us through long years. The struggle has not been ours alone. The women and men of the working class bastis of Bhilai and Raipur and villages of Baloda Bazar of who stood in solidarity with us to brave lathis (stick blows) and share the trauma of confinement within jails and lockups; our friends amongst unionists, lawyers, journalists, students, social activists, film makers, and intellectuals in Chhattisgarh and all over the country, who supported us morally and materially; our comrades of IndustriALL, NTUI and Solifonds who through international solidarity made negotiations possible – to all of you, we say a very big thank you.

We also remember, humbly, those who are no longer with us –Comrade Shankar Guha Niyogi and the martyr workers of Bhilai – who remind us of larger political goals and dreams, still a very long and way away. We hope that today’s gains strengthen our resolve to fight the narrow gains of 'economism' and to move towards these wider goals.

Duniya ke Mazdooron Ek Ho!
Looteron ki Jageer Nahi, Chhattisgarh Hamara Hai!
Inquilab Zindabad!

(This has been jointly issued by Bansi, Lakhan, Ramakant, Rajkumar, Kaladas, Saraswati, Kaushal, Neera,Shalini, Rinchin, Shreya, Mahesh, Sudha, Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee)

Other Documents of Interest (below):

1. An example of Nirman – Shaheed School

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