UP's labour pains

Contradictory moves won't help the cause of workers

Labour has become the source of political manoeuvring in Uttar Pradesh, which accounts for a significant share of migrant workers in other states. Having been, together with other states, culpably dilatory in responding to the plight of migrants, summarily ejected from their homes and workplaces after the national lockdown, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has made a series of contradictory moves that blights the cause of labour in his state. His latest announcement that states seeking to employ migrant workers from UP will need to take the state government’s permission is flawed as it is against the fundamental right that allows