TVK backstabbed the nurses, charges Stalin, after Chennai police detain hunger-striking nurses

Chennai police detained nurses staging a hunger strike near the Rajarathinam Stadium on the night of October 5, capping a day of protest that has become one of the first major labour confrontations for the TVK government. The nurses had been demanding job security, equal pay and permanent employment, along with pending incentives and paid maternity leave. According to reports from the protest site, power was cut at the venue before the arrests. The nurses refused to leave, continuing their sit-in by the light of their mobile phones, and were then arrested overnight. Their legal adviser alleged that the nurses had been invited for talks on the pretext of holding discussions, only to be taken into custody. The police action drew sharp condemnation from the opposition on October 6. DMK president M.K. Stalin alleged that the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government had 'backstabbed nurses after promising to fulfil their demands'. He said the nurses had been 'fighting for job security, equal pay, and permanent employment', and asked: 'How could the government bring itself to arrest nurses when it is not able to hold talks with them?' Stalin said the TVK had extended support to the protesting nurses before coming to power but resorted to police action after assuming office. He recalled a woman police officer warning the nurses, gesticulating with her fingers and saying 'Your life is important', and asked whether the Chief Minister, who holds the police portfolio, would respond to it, or 'make reels of the woman police officer's action and advertise it as an achievement'. 'Is this the change the TVK is talking about?' he asked. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palanisami also attacked the government, calling the 'police brutality' unleashed on peacefully protesting nurses 'the height of cruelty'. 'The police force under the Chief Minister has committed this fascist atrocity against nurses who are engaged in the vital duty of saving lives,' he said. 'How will this Reels Chief Minister justify it?' Palanisami accused the TVK of saying one thing before coming to power and doing the opposite after assuming office, and demanded the immediate release of all arrested nurses with no cases filed against them. The confrontation comes on a day Tamil Nadu is voting in the Madurantakam and Dharapuram bypolls, the TVK government's first electoral test. It is also the latest in a run of labour protests to confront the new government: sanitation workers in Tiruchengode and Amma Unavagam canteen workers in Virudhunagar have taken to the streets in recent days over permanent jobs and fair pay. For a government that came to power promising change, the answer to striking workers, so far, has been the police van.