The demand to confer Bharat Ratna on Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Kanshi Ram, declare the Students Federation of India (SFI) as a terror outfit and guidelines for workers engaged in food delivery apps like Zomato and Swiggy were among the prominent issues raised during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
BSP’s Danish Ali, speaking a day after Kanshi Ram’s 88th birth anniversary, said, “He had united ‘bahujan samaj’ and we demand that he be given Bharat Ratna. I hope the government will take cognizance of this and award Bharat Ratna to Kanshi Ram.”
Congress member Hibi Eden raised the issue of a woman leader of the Congress–backed Kerala Students’ Union (KSU) being ‘brutally’ beaten up allegedly by the activists of the CPI(M)‘s student wing SFI at the Government Law College in Thiruvananthapuram.
“The SFI in Kerala should be banned like a terrorist organisation because the number of crimes committed every day by this particular organisation is unimaginable,” he said, urging the Centre to intervene in the matter.
Raising the issue of gig worker — a person who has a non–traditional relationship with the employer — Congress member Karti Chidambaram urged the government to regulate food delivery companies like Zomato and Swiggy and protect the workers from unrealistic targets and take care of their safety.
“There are companies which are valued in billions that operate in this gig economy like Swiggy, Dunzo, Zomato, Uber and Ola. They are all valued in billions of dollars,” he said, adding that the gig economy workers estimated to be around 15 million is bound to grow to 25 million or even 100 million in the long term.
Stating that the valuation of these companies is based on turnaround time, he said, “So we have delivery companies that promise food and groceries or any products within 10 minutes or 30 minutes but this delivery is done not by the employees of the companies”.
The Congress MP said such “unreasonable and unrealistic” delivery targets put the delivery agent at risk and they are not covered by a proper insurance scheme.
His party colleague, Manickam Tagore, raised the issue of what he called “dead body politics” in Tamil Nadu and said suicides of youths were being linked with minority communities of Muslims and Christians by the BJP for “divisive political agenda”.
Congress MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla demanded that Indians who assisted students stuck in Ukraine and helped in their evacuation should be honoured.
