Randeep Singh Surjewala, AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka and MP, said that 80% of India’s workforce is in the unorganised sector while 60% of India’s workers don’t have a written contract.

Supporting the call for Bharat Bandh on July 9 by trade unions to ‘oppose the anti-worker, anti-farmer and anti-national pro-corporate policies of the government’, he claimed that ‘53% of the Indian workforce has no social security, which means no insurance and no pension’. 

Bharat Bandh live updates – July 09, 2025

Quoting a survey, he said wages have increased by 0.8% while inflation has increased by 6%, and wages have not increased as per the inflation rate. “That’s why unions and 25 crore workers are on strike today (July 9),” he said. He urged the Narendra Modi government to open their eyes and see the problems.

He claimed that over 10% of the graduates and post-graduates are unemployed. “Unemployment in India is at a 45-year high. There are no jobs, and that’s why trade unions are trying to draw attention of the Modi government by calling for a Bharat bandh today.”

While SC/ST/OBC categories are under attack by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ‘his government’s budget for MGNREGA has stagnated at about ₹86,000 crores’, Mr Surjewala told reporters in Bengaluru.

“We (UPA government) gave 100 days of statutory guarantee of work every year, but the Modi government has provided only 44 days of work,” the AICC leader alleged.