Hindi Prachar Sabha in trouble, lock out declared

Chennai, Dec 29 (UNI) The 88-year-old Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (DBHPS), founded by Mahatma Gandhi here to spread Hindi among non-Hindi speaking people of South India, is embroiled in a labour dipute and has stayed closed for more than two weeks now.

The present imbroglio involving management and labour union has paralysed book sales and administrative and printing work of the institution, putting a question mark over the conduct of examinations scheduled for February.

The sabha caters to nearly 2.5 lakh students in the southern part of the country, offering regular and post-graduate courses and research programmes. In Chennai alone, it has 60,000 students.

Founded in 1918, the sabha was declared by Parliament as an Institution of National Importance under Act 14 of 1964.

The central sabha here has provincial units in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, besides Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu.

Union Minister of State for Planning M V Rajasekaran now heads the sabha, which boasts of an illustrious list of Presidents including Gandhiji, Lal Bahadur Shastri, R Venkataraman, K R Narayanan and former Chief Justice of India Ranganath Misra.

Trouble broke out when the management recently transferred three employees from the sabha to the press wing. As sabha employees come under separate service rules and press workers come under the Factory Act, with less benefits, the workers protested against the decision.

The matter was subsequently taken to the Labour Commission, but three round of tripartite talks so far failed to break the deadlock.

As 150-odd workers began a sit-in agitation, the management announced a lockout on December 11.

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