Dhanbad on Thursday witnessed a massive joint demonstration, sit-in and slogan shouting against the Centre’s decision to carry out commercial mining.

The leaders of different central trade unions, including Indian National Trade Union Congress (Intuc), All India Trade Union Congress (Aituc), Central Industrial Trade Union (Citu), Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) and Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS) congregated at the Coal India Ltd subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Limited headquarters at Koylanagar as part of a nation-wide protest and served the authorities a three-day strike notice from July 2.

Demonstrations were held at 12 different area offices of the BCCL and the area-level trade union leaders served the notice to the respective general managers.

The protest began around 11am with a meeting in the presence of senior trade union leaders, including former urban development minister of Jharkhand, Bachcha Singh (also the general secretary of the Janta Mazdoor Sangh affiliated to Hind Mazdoor Sabha); former animal husbandry and fishery minister, Mannan Mullick (also former district general secretary of Rashtriya Colliery Mazdoor Union affiliated to Intuc) and general secretaries of different trade unions who denounced the government decision to carry out commercial mining.

The leaders appealed to the coal workers to make the strike a success.

A.K. Jha, the state general secretary of the Rashtriya Colliery Mazdoor Sangh, who was also present in the meeting and demonstration at Koylabhavan told The Telegraph Online, “Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi carried out nationalisation of collieries in early 1970s in order to order better and safe working conditions for more than 7.5 lakh coal workers but the decision of the current government to carry out coal mining will bring back the old days of exploitation and unscientific mining.”

Siddharth Gautam, the joint general secretary of the Janta Mazdoor Sangh, said, “The government’s decision to carry out commercial mining is in complete contrast to its public stand of being pro-poor as it will clearly benefit the big private parties who will carry out mining in violation of environment norms and also in gross disregard of labour laws with the pure focus on money minting.”