Left bandh cripples IT sector in West Bengal

The Citu-sponsored bandh yesterday, brought normal life in the city to a complete halt, with the industrial strike taking the shape of a general strike.

Most of the establishments in Kolkata were closed. Even the IT and ITES sectors, which were declared public utility services by the state government with much fanfare, were virtually closed.

While there was meagre attendance in companies like Octagon Software, Atlas Software, Simoco, BNKe Solution, Manjusha Infotech and Reliance Telecom, the biggies""PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Congnizant Technology Solutions (CTS), SkyTech Solutions""decided to declare today as a substituted off-day. Less than half of the employees at IBM turned up.

G D Gautama, IT secretary said that some of the people turned up in the sector for critical deliveries.

The IT and ITES companies decided against keeping their offices open after Citu refused to recognise the sector as a public utility service. The 'Left' trade union said that the public utility service stickers distributed by Webel were not acceptable.

Its not just the knowledge sector which was affected by the bandh. Operations were disrupted at Lyons Range where around 100 brokers were evicted from their offices at noon time by a Citu group, two hours after they had already started operations. The day traders who had to square-off their deals waited for the Citu leaders to leave, before they could resume operations.

Banking operations countrywide,including that of the central bank, were paralysed due to the strike called by the united forum of bank unions.

Transport came to a standstill. Train services in Kharagpur and Adra divisions of South Eastern Railway were disrupted since morning due to agitations at different stations.

As a result, a number of mail and express trains suffered detention at various stations enroute. Besides, a good number of EMU local trains were cancelled or short terminated.

Private cars, which were exempted from the "industrial" strike could hardly be seen on the roads. Buses also kept off the roads.

Some of the educational institutes were officially open but, students were advised to stay at home.

Industry representatives said, today's bandh was a regressive step for the state government, which had made some headway in projecting the state as an investor-friendly destination.