Protest against Selling of Coal India Shares

THE CPI (ML) and CMWU organized a protest and effigy burning of Coal Minister Piyush Goyal on 3 November 2018 at a Colliery in Nirsa Block (ECL) to protest against the selling of 9% shares of Coal India.

Speakers at the protest meeting said that Coal India has already sold 23% of its shares. The decision to sell the shares was leaked in a planned way so that the prices of CIL shares fell in the share market, resulting in huge financial losses to the coal industry. The whole matter reeks of huge loot and corruption and should be probed. The company is selling equity shares, resulting in workers’ rights being cut and corporate houses being given more rights. Coal workers must ask their Unions the question: coal workers are stake-holders in the Company; how then can the government deny them their right to have a say in the selling of shares and take a unilateral decision to sell the shares? The Modi government is bent on turning probe agencies, economic and judicial institutions like the CBI, Reserve Bank, and Supreme Court into fascist institutions of loot and corruption. It is in this same series that the hateful attempt to privatize the coal industry is being hastily taken forward; as if they know that it is “if not now, never”.

The Coal Mines Workers Union (CMWU) appealed to the workers to do all required preparations to make the coal workers’ strike on 8-9 January a historic success and throw out the BJP-RSS decisively in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.