Chennai, July 08: Tamil Nadu government continued its recruitment drive to fill up the vacancies caused by the dismissal of employees for their participation in the indefinite strike, even as the Madras High Court was still hearing a batch of petitions by the striking employees, challenging the validity of Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) and their dismissal under it. As the strike entered the seventh day today, the state government continued the recruitment of temporary employees under stringent conditions. Though dismissed, some of the employees, mostly women, turned up for duty in government offices, but their superiors refused permission to them for resumption of duty. The government recruited 1,000 people to be deployed in the secretariat alone and 500 in each district. It has plans to recruit over 11,500 temporary employees.

A division bench of the court comprising Chief Justice B Subhashan Reddy and Justice K Govindarajan, continued its hearing for the second day today, on arguments on petitions, which among other things challenged the July 4 Ordinance empowering the government to summarily dismiss employees who went on an indefinite strike since July two. Bureau Report