THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Opposition staged a walkout from the Assembly on Thursday after the Chair denied permission for an adjournment motion on the alleged police excesses upon youth activists, belonging to various Leftist organisations on Wednesday in front of the Secretariat and district collectorates in various parts of the state.CPI member V S Sunil Kumar and P Sreemakrishnan of the CPM and others from the Opposition had given notice to the attention of the House that around 300 workers, including state office-bearers of various Leftist youth organisations such as DYFI state president M Swaraj and AIYF state secretary K Rajan, who were protesting against the pension age hike, were brutally handled and injured. They demanded that the matter should be discussed immediately.Sunil Kumar charged that the police force have been let loose by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, whom he termed as an epitome of arrogance after the victory in the Piravom polls. He said that even mediapersons were not spared by the police while charging and the costly equipment of mediapersons were heavily damaged.The Chief Minister said that there was no rationale in the agitation of youth organisations as the government had only regularised the pension age at 56, which was already so in effect after the pension unification scheme was brought in by the LDF Government.Chandy also took the sail out of the Opposition barrage, by presenting copies of Government Orders issued by the LDF Government, increasing the retirement age in the Coastal Shipping and Inland Navigation Ltd as well as in the State Beverages Corporation from 55 to 58. He flaunted copies of the orders in the House, issued a few days before the notification for the general elections last year.Former Ministers P K Gurudasan and S Sarma tried to justify it by pointing out that the measure was resorted to by the previous government on account of the fact that the employees in the two organisations were not eligible for pension. Chandy retorted that when the Opposition was expressing so much protest over the pension age hike even when all knows that it was only a standardisation exercise to overcome administrative hiccups.“If the government had increased the pension age, it should have been 58 years. What has been attempted now is only a standardisation or correction process on an anomaly created by the LDF Government,” he said.While Speaker G Karthikeyan denied permission to move the motion after Chandy’s clarification, Opposition Leader V S Achuthandan and leaders of LDF Constituents trooped their respective members out of the house in protest.
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