Sat, 17 Oct, 2026, 12:08 pm
Reported by Deccan Herald
Ahmedabad: Around 10 am on Thursday, about a hundred textile workers assembled in front of the Surat collector’s office. Uniformed and plainclothes policemen, wielding batons, had been deployed at the office’s entrance and were monitoring anyone entering the premises.
As a few TV news crews arrived and began interviewing the workers, they grew charged as each interviewee raised their grievances. The crowd cheered and screamed: “We want weekly offs, but the Sethiyas (employers) mark us absent. After taking our Aadhaar cards, they threaten to deny us work. They also threaten us with the police. The more they try to suppress us, the stronger our ‘Gaon Chalo’ movement will become.”
The gathering didn’t last long as the police moved in. Some protesters grabbed and bundled into buses that arrived suddenly. With their prominent leaders already detained, the leaderless protest quickly fizzled out.
The call for the agitation was given by the Gujarat unit of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). Its chairman and president Naishadh Desai and other leaders — including Suresh Sonavane and Malkhan Verma — had been detained. Another activist, Ajay Dubey, was arrested by the police on extortion charges ahead of the agitation.
