Eastern Region of NCCOEEE prepares the 20 May 2025 national strike

The Eastern Region of the National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers met in Kolkata on 21 March 2025. P. N. Chowdhury, Convener of NCCOEEE, inaugurated the meeting with a note on the state of the sector.

He placed the privatisation drive in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and the threat over Puducherry, in the third term of the present Central government. Speakers included Shailendra Dubey (Chairman, AIPEF), Sudip Dutta (General Secretary, EEFI), Baijnath Singh (AIFEE), Satya Ranjan Sarkar (AIFOPDE) and Samar Sinha (General Secretary, AIPF). Leaders from West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha took part, as did organisations from Damodar Valley Corporation, CESC, and contract workers’ unions.

Sudip Dutta put the attack as a single offensive: generation, transmission and distribution; Central, State and private; coal-import burden and prepaid smart metering. The struggle, he said, has to be integrated in the same way.

The meeting took the decisions of the National Convention of Workers held in New Delhi on 18 March 2025 and resolved on a nationwide strike of power employees on 20 May 2025, with a further power-sector strike dated 26 June 2025.

A regional chapter of NCCOEEE was formed with Manas Sinha as Convener. Sudhin Kr. Dhar was elected Convener of the West Bengal chapter. The North-Eastern regional meeting was fixed for 22 March 2025 at Guwahati.

Resolutions included: joint protest at stations and offices the day Labour Code notifications are issued; state conventions by 20 April 2025; two joint leaflets — one on the Codes, one on the electricity sector; gate meetings in the last week of April; rallies at state capitals in the first week of May; street-corner and door-to-door work with consumers; separate strike notices from electricity unions; and mass mobilisation at district headquarters on the strike day.