The Uttar Pradesh government announced an interim minimum-wage hike of around 21% for factory workers in Gautam Buddha Nagar and Ghaziabad on Tuesday, following days of escalating protests in Noida’s industrial belt that left dozens of vehicles torched, over 350 people arrested, and at least five police personnel injured. But even as it moved to address the workers’ core demand, the state government alleged a conspiracy behind the stir — invoking Pakistan, Naxalism, and “anti-national forces”.
The protests, which began on April 10 at the Hosiery Complex in Noida’s Phase 2, had been building for months. Workers earning between ₹11,000 and ₹15,000 a month — among the lowest wages in the National Capital Region — watched neighbouring Haryana raise its minimum wage by 35% in the first week of April, from ₹14,000 to ₹19,000. Workers doing comparable work just across the state border wanted the same, hence the central demand was a minimum monthly wage of ₹20,000.
The trigger at one of the units was a wage hike notice of just ₹340–360 a month. Some of the workforce went on strike by April 10, and by Monday, April 13, over 40,000 workers had flooded the streets across more than 80 locations in Noida’s industrial zones, police officials said. Vehicles were set on fire, and police deployed tear gas.
Workers describe exploitation
Workers spoke of systematic underpayment and work-hour abuse.
Tularam, a garment factory worker in Phase 2 who said he’s been in the industry for five years, said his salary had risen just ₹2,000 in that time, to ₹13,000. “My salary gets exhausted by the 10th of every month,” he said, “The government is not paying us. We are paid by the factory owners, who are offering us pennies for our hard work.”
Mohini Pal, 27, who works at an export company in Sector 57, said she earns ₹10,275 a month and does overtime for which she is not paid. “Factory owners are exploiting us,” she said, adding that ₹1,350 is deducted from her salary if she takes a single day off.
Sangeeta, another worker, described production targets so punishing that workers could not step away from machines to drink water or use the washroom.
Rambha Devi claimed she was paid for only 21 hours of overtime despite completing 115 hours, and that ₹2,739 was withheld from her salary as punishment for participating in the strike.
“We can’t even buy a bicycle, and these guys buy BMWs and Mercedes every month,” said another worker.
Government responds
On Tuesday, a high-level committee constituted by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of the BJP government raised interim wages. Unskilled workers will now earn ₹13,690 instead of ₹11,313; semi-skilled workers ₹15,059 instead of ₹12,445; and skilled workers ₹16,868 instead of ₹13,940. The hike is effective from April 1.
Workers called it insufficient, still short of their ₹20,000 demand for even the skilled category. Protests therefore continued on Tuesday.
Before the wage hike, in a statement after a late-night review meeting in Lucknow on Sunday, Yogi Adityanath said, “Naxalism in the country is now nearly finished, but attempts to revive it could be part of a larger conspiracy. There is a possibility that misleading and disruptive elements were involved in some recent protests.”
He ordered authorities to identify anyone “posing as labour representatives”.
Labour minister Anil Rajbhar went further and cited the recent arrest of four suspects in Noida and Meerut with alleged links to handlers in Pakistan. He said the protests appeared to have been planned to “destabilise the state”.
Police said social media accounts, and WhatsApp groups, had been created in the preceding days to “mislead” protesters. FIRs have been registered against two X handles, with over 50 suspected “bot accounts” identified.
From the Opposition bloc, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, however, said, “Before defaming the workers’ movement by linking it to Naxalism, the government must explain what it has done in the last 10 years that such conditions have emerged. If you cannot heal the wounds of workers, at least do not rub salt into them.”
He also jibed whether the state’s intelligence apparatus had been occupied campaigning in West Bengal, where elections are being held, “rather than monitoring Noida”.
Rahul points to Labour Codes, global inflation
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in a post on X, framed the crisis in broader terms, and linked the rising living costs to the US-Israel war on Iran, which has disrupted global fuel supply chains. He argued the burden had fallen entirely on daily wage workers rather than on big industrialists.
He criticised the central government’s implementation of four new Labour Codes in November 2025 too, which he said extended the working day to 12 hours without adequate consultation.
“The worker who works 12-hour shifts every day but borrows money to pay his children’s school fees — is his demand unreasonable?” he wrote, adding, “I stand with every worker who is the backbone of this nation and has been treated as a burden by this government.”
Protests were still continuing as of Tuesday evening as workers said they had received no formal communication from factory owners about the revised wage structure, even after the government’s announcement.