Troops wielding machine guns and dressed in battle fatigues took control of Kidwai Bhavan. Women staff present in the building in the evening were ordered to work or get out of the building. As the women continued to protest in groups, policemen and officials ordered the women staff out. There were no women constables as the women were being pushed out. Several males among the staff were beaten up by policemen when they sat inside shouting slogans against P C Sethi, Congress-I MP who allegedly threatened and humiliated a woman telephone operator inside the exchange. One woman operator said she was hit by a policeman inside the building.

Public sector losses

The Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, voiced concern over the money being lost in meeting public sector losses and said this was an issue that merited a national debate. Inaugurating the first Congress Seva Dal training camp for young parliamentarians in Nainital, the PM, however, said that the government did not want workers to lose their wages. “This is a very large issue,” Gandhi told a gathering of about 300 parliamentarians, Seva Dal volunteers and Congress workers.

Blast in Baroda

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Three persons were injured, two of them seriously, when a powerful blast ripped apart the basement of the multi-storeyed Suraj Plaza extension building in the Sayajigunj area of Baroda at around 10.45 a.m. The three were rushed to the Sayajigunj Hospital. A hospital source said that two of them had suffered “60-80 per cent burns.”

Attack on political leader

West Bengal Pradesh Congress (I) President Priya Ranjan Das Munshi on Saturday narrowly escaped from being killed at his office on Haji Mohammed Mohsin Square in Central Calcutta. A violent mob stormed the office room when his personal security guard fired three rounds in the air to scare away the miscreants.