The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee on Monday constituted a panel to look into the matters of the employees of two mills of the Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL) closed since October 2015.
The panel headed by Lok Sabha member Pradyut Bordoloi was formed following an eviction notice served by the HPCL’s liquidator to the occupants of the dilapidated residential quarters of the two mills — one in Morigaon district’s Jagiroad and the other in Haikandi district’s Panchgram.
“The panel members had an interaction with the representatives of the Nagaon Paper Mill (Jagiroad) employees and took note of their longstanding problems and the government’s failure to honour its commitment to revive the mills,” State Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah said.
The Congress alluded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s repeated election promises to rejuvenate the paper mills, which were instead intended to be auctioned off. No bidder turned up for the auction in June.
Liquidator’s notice ‘preposterous’
“The notice by Kuldeep Verma, liquidator, to the employees to vacate their residential quarters within 15 days is ridiculous, preposterous and devoid of any compassionate reasoning,” Mr. Bordoloi said.
The Joint Action Committee of Recognised Unions (JACRU) termed the eviction notice illegal since “the liquidator or corporate debtor is neither a court nor judge or magistrate to interpret or clarify the position of law and is duty-bound to abide by the order of the adjudicating authority”.
