THE secretariat of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) expressed its profound grief at the passing away of Comrade Mohammed Nizamuddin, veteran trade union leader from West Bengal, general secretary of the All India Beedi Workers’ Federation and a member of the all India working committee of CITU. He passed away in Kolkata on June 21, 2016 at the age of 83.

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions, in a statement issued on June 21, has strongly denounced the sweeping changes made by the Modi led BJP government to ease FDI in nine key sectors including defence, aviation, pharmaceutical and food processing.

THE tenth Maharashtra state conference of the All India Democratic Women’s Association was held in the Shaheed Dr Narendra Dabholkar Nagar in Sangli city from June 3-5, 2016. The hall of the conference was named after Shamali Gupta and the dais was named after Shaheed Com Govind Pansare.

There is no recruitment for the government posts at the state and central government levels. Why is the CPI(M) and Left not taking up this issue in a big way?
Shyamlal Panda, Raigada

THE central government and most of the state governments are not filling up the vacancies in government posts. In fact there is a official ban on recruitment to these posts. According to the Seventh Pay Commission, in the central government departments there are 7.47 lakh vacancies. Lakhs more are there lying vacant at the state governments’ level.

THE Modi government has announced another set of sweeping liberalised norms for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in various sectors. In the last two years of the Modi government, there has been successive liberalisation of FDI norms across the board. The current relaxations include 100 per cent FDI in the defence sector, retail food trade, civil aviation, cable networks, DTH and other telecom services. Apart from this, 74 percent FDI through the automatic route will be allowed to facilitate takeover of existing Indian pharmaceutical companies.