However, while the joint front of trade unions of Life Insurance Corporation and General Insurance Corporation which called the day-long country-wide strike, claimed that the strike was `total' with even the field staff joining it, government said it evoked partial response in GIC officies and was total in LIC offices.

Official sources said in New Delhi that work at both LIC and GIC offices at Calcutta, Guwahati and Patna were badly hit due to the strike.

While class one employees of LIC attended offices, class two, three and four employees comprising 90 per cent of the workforce abstained, they said.

In the GIC, while attendance in Mumbai was 94 per cent, field offices' work was paralysed as most of the employees struck work, the sources said.

In Chennai, the GIC managementsources maintained that some of their offices functioned today.

In United India, New India Assurance, Oriental Insurance and National Insurance, subsidiaries of GIC, attendance ranged from 19 to 82 per cent, they said.

In Delhi, activists of All India Insurance Employees Association (AIIEA) and Life Insurance Employees Union (LICEU) staged a demonstration in front of the New LIC building, shouted slogans against Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and accused the Centre of ``mortgaging'' the country's sovereignty by bringing the ``black Bill.''

Similar demonstration were held in Mumbai, the headquarters for insurance companies and other parts of the country.

General secretary of the All India Life Insurance Employees Association, Sanat Bhattacharya said in Calcutta the Bill was detrimental to the interest of about eight crore policy holders.

``The view that private and foreign insurance companies would provide sufficient fund for infrastructural development is amyth,'' he said.

Threatening that ``insurance employees are now on warpath and are determined to stall government's move..'', the front said demonstrations and strikes will continue in protest against the Bill as long as the current Parliament session lasts.