Anganwadi Workers Demanded Regularisation of Jobs - Yogi Govt. Slapped Sedition Charges

In a move which has sent shock waves across the country, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has criminalised dissent and the idea of peaceful protests by booking anganwadi workers under charges of sedition when they demanded a better deal from the government.

In Sitapur district, over 90 kms from the state capital Lucknow, four anganwadi workers had been active in organising protest demonstrations on their demands including an increase in their honorarium and regularisation of their jobs.

The Uttar Pradesh police charged Neetu Singh, Sarita Verma, Manju Vanshwar and Santosh Kumari with the stringent IPC section 121A (conspiring to wage, or attempt to wage war, or abet waging of war against the government of India). They were arrested and sent to 14-days of judicial custody.

Neetu Singh, who is district president of Mahila Anganwadi Karmchari Sangh, a State wide association of Anganwadi workers, along with fellow workers had staged a protest on Sitapur-Lucknow highway on December 8, the day of Adityanath's visit to Sitapur. The Sitapur Police filed an FIR against Singh, her 29 named fellow workers and seventy other unnamed persons case of rioting and criminal intimidation among other charges.

Initially, Neetu Singh and her comrade-in-arms were arrested the very same day and were charged with 147 (rioting), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 506 (criminal intimidation). Later on Saturday they were presented before a judicial magistrate and sent to judicial custody.

Then things turned worse. When the police found out that Neetu Singh and fellow anganwadi workers had organised a protest on December 4 as well before Yogi's visit, the police invoked charges of sedition against the workers and slapped Section 121 of the IPC.

Sub-Inspector Raj Bahadur, who is the investigating officer of the case, told NewsClick that Section 121A of the IPC was invoked against Neetu and her fellow workers on the basis of police complaint. “Section 121A of the IPC was added in the FIR on Saturday. The protesters were arrested on the basis of both the FIRs,” Bahadur told NewsClick.

Actually, Neetu Singh's protest on December 4 had grabbed national headlines because of its creativity. She “married” Yogi Adityanath in a “symbolic mock wedding” which as she put it that day, was “a way to protest against the unfair treatment to anganwadi workers” and “a way to attract attention of the country to their plight”.

In an event which got tremendous media coverage ironically after it was held, Neetu Singh garlanded a picture of Adityanath amid chanting of drum beatings and hymns. The mock wedding was solemnised in the presence of a large number of anganwadi workers in Sitapur. Importantly, they were booked under charges related to rioting Section 147 for their protest on December 4. But there was no arrest.

It is important to mention here that the protest of Neetu and her fellow workers is part of the state wide agitation by anganwadi workers demanding a better honorarium and working condition from the State government. In October thousands of anganwadi workers staged a dharna in Lucknow and tried to meet the Chief Minister Adityanath at his residence. But they were brutally cane charged and many of them were injured in the process.

The Anganwadi workers had given a four-month ultimatum to the state's new Bharatiya Janata Party government to address their problems, but even after eight months the state government has done nothing for them.

“I have ordered a probe in the entire episode. The Circle officer of Sitapur city police station has been assigned with the task of conducting an inquiry into how section 121A was invoked against the anganwadi workers. On the basis of the probe report action will be taken against the policeman who invoked Sedition against them,” Superintendent of Police of Sitapur Sureshrao A Kulkarni told the media on Monday.

Kulkarni said that the charge of sedition seemed to have been invoked against the Anganwadi workers by “mistake” and the police will move to the court to withdraw the charge. However, the hurry in which an extremely serious and stringent law like sedition was used shows the state of civil liberties in UP.

The criminalisation of dissent and its simple expression like peaceful protest has turned out to be a defining feature of the Adityanath government. Since it formed the government in April, about two dozen people have been arrested in the State just for expressing dissent, in what has emerged now to be a clear pattern of attack on civil liberties. Ordinary residents of the State have been charged, arrested and jailed for social media posts which are seen as satirical, critical, or in very few cases offensive to authority figures like Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath.