Kejirwal urges Shah to regularise 4,500 temporary NDMC workers

The proposal for approval of recruitment rules of Group ‘C’ posts, which can enable regularisation of the workers, was first proposed by the council to the home ministry in September 2020

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to Union home minister Amit Shah urging that 4,500 contractual workers in the New Delhi Municipal Council be given regular jobs. Kejriwal, who is a member of the council overseeing the civic affairs of the Lutyens Delhi, wrote in a letter dated February 6that several proposals in this regard have been sent by the council to the home ministry but the problem has not been resolved, and asked the ministry to approve the recruitment rules of Group C employees so that they can be granted the status of permanent employees.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is a member of the council overseeing the civic affairs of Lutyens Delhi, wrote that several proposals in this regard have been sent to the home ministry but the problem has not been resolved. (HT Archive)

The proposal for approval of the recruitment rules of Group C posts, which can enable the regularisation of the workers, was first proposed by the council to the home ministry in September 2020, and revised proposal was submitted on April 16, 2021.

Kejriwal, who had sent a similar letter to the home ministry last March, wrote that NDMC also submitted a reminder on the matter on November 23, 2022.

The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, described the move as a “political gimmick”.

“I wish to urge you to intervene in the matter so that the regular muster roll employees (temporary workers) can be absorbed as regular NDMC employees. These are very poor people who have been working with the council from last 20-25 years and it is becoming difficult for them to run their households with meagre salaries,” the chief minister wrote in the letter, a copy of which was released by the government on Tuesday?

Kejriwal concluded that since a similar exercise was done in the past, there should be no procedural problem in seeing it through.

“NDMC at the moment is also facing a shortage of employees and this has affected its daily functions. The regularisation of these employees will also go a long way in solving this issue,” Kejriwal wrote.

Sudhakar Kumar, president of the New Delhi Palika Karamchari Sangh, said that the RMR regular muster roll employees face a humanitarian crisis as they have been working with council over the last two decades with salaries as low as ₹13,000 a month.

“These are the real field workers-- gardeners, sanitation staff, sewer network maintenance staff who keep the New Delhi functional. It is sad that their files remain pending for so many years while in case of Group A employees such files are cleared in a matter of few days,” he told HT.

NDMC vice-chairman and former BJP state president, Satish Upadhyay, said that Kejriwal was unnecessarily politicising the issue, and that the process of regularising workers had already been initiated by the council.

“This is a political gimmick to create unrest among the workers. We have already passed the resolution to regularize the workers and the process is on. Being a member of the council, Kejriwal should not politicise the matter. What has he done in this matter except writing this letter,” Upadhyay said.