Mumbai Port Trust

Aadhaar Card

Bombay High Court

government welfare schemes

General Employees Union

Whenasked all its 9,500 employees to submit theirdetails in 2015, they all fell in line; except a 49-year-old charge-man of the technical department, Ramesh Kurhade. As a result, Port Trust stopped payment of salary to Kurhade in July 2016. An active member of several employee unions and an ardent follower of famed trade union leader Dutta Samant, Kurhade single-handedly fought a four-year battle against this “arbitrary diktat” and won last month. On June 20, thereportedly ordered Port Trust to pay Kurhade 7.5 per cent interest for the 29 months of non-payment until October 2018.Kurhade’s fight pre-dates the historic Aadhaar judgement that upheld the Aadhaar Act, including the mandatory use of Aadhaar-based identification for, but struck down the mandatory private use of Aadhaar. Kurhade fell under the latter.As a 12-year-old, Kurhade, the son of a mill worker, remembers following Samant on foot as the latter led the historic year-long textile mill workers strike in 1982 that resulted in the closure of several mills in the city.“He (Samant) believed that if a company earned from its employees, they should be given their due. My fight on his principles is only a small tribute to him and Dr Shanti Patel, who led the Mumbai Port Trust Docks and, which I am a part off.”But pumping money into a long-drawn battle taking on the union couldn’t have been easy for the only bread winner of the family of four. “Yes, I have growing children and my wife is a homemaker but Dr Samant always said if you want to fight, start by stocking up on at least six months of food,” he said.It took a year from the first notice in 2015 asking Port Trust employees to link their Aadhaar cards till the time they stopped disbursing Kurhade’s salary in July 2016. “I saved as much as I could during this time,” he said.Initially, around 30 people refused to give their Aadhaar details; many of them hadn’t even made the cards by then. However, till the time the third notice was put up, warning employees about a pay cut, only five of them were left, Kurhade recalls.“Like others, I thought they were only threatening us. But when our salaries weren’t disbursed, the rest gave their details. I knew I wasn’t bowing out without a fight,” said Kurhade. All through 2016-17, Kurhade exchanged a series of letters with Port Trust officials, finally resulting in a writ petition that he filed in the HC in January 2018 through advocate DP Sawant.When asked if he faced any backlash, Kurhade said some people from the finance department tried to pressure him by transferring him to another department last August. “The employees’ union couldn’t support me because everyone else had fallen in line. I was against Aadhaar for the same reason its protractors were against it. It is a breach of privacy. Till the time they were using it for welfare schemes there was no problem, as it cut out the drainage. But then it began seeping into our personal space without necessary guards,” he said.Kurhade said he knew he wasn’t fighting a losing battle, especially when the Aadhaar judgement came in his favour. Last November, through an interim order, the HC ordered BPT to start paying his wages and made that order absolute with interest last month.“Everyone was against the idea of fighting. They thought I had gone mad. I would tell them, only mad men write history.”2015: BPT asks 9,500 employees to submit Aadhaar detailsJuly 2016: Stops Ramesh Kurhade’s salaryJanuary 2018: Kurhade files writ petitionAugust 2018: BPT transfers KurhadeNovember 2018: HC orders BPT to pay his salaryJune 22, 2019: Orders BPT to pay salary with 7.5% interest