Punjab Government employees have withdrawn their protest after the state government assured to withdraw its letter of August 27, wherein it had declared their mass casual protest leave an “unauthorised leave”.The decision to withdraw the protest was taken after an hour-long meeting between Chief Secretary KAP Sinha and employee leaders, including Sahil Sharma and Alka Chopra, at the former’s office this morning. The Chief Secretary assured the leaders that no coercive action would be taken against the employees, and that the meeting was “fruitful”.Following this, employee union leaders, including the convener of the Sanjha Mullazam Manch Sukhchain Khera, announced that the strike was being rolled back. “The agreement has been reached only regarding the withdrawal of letters seeking action against protesting employees, including the “no work, no pay” action proposed by the government yesterday. No discussion on our original demands of enhanced dearness allowance (DA); reverting to Old Pension Scheme and other service and pay structure-related demands have taken place. As a result, our protest concerning these demands on September 12-13 will continue as scheduled,” said Khera.Today was the second day of the pen-down strike by the employees, called to pressurise the government to withdraw the order of declaring their previous protest leave as unauthorised leave. Yesterday, the union leaders were first called for talks by Principal Secretary General Administration K K Yadav, but the talks remained unfruitful. Following this, the employees, who had initially announced a strike for a day on Tuesday decided to extend their protest till Friday. The employees were demanding that talks would be held only if the government withdrew its order of August 27, calling their strike then as “unauthorised leave” and the show-cause notices being issued to employees. After the employees extended their protest last evening, the government initiated action under “no work no pay” policy.