"Don't convert this court into police station," SC to Yuva Shakti

SC no to PIL for invoking MCOCA against Raj Thackeray 

New Delhi, Nov 21: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain a petition seeking registration of a criminal case under MCOCA against MNS chief Raj Thackeray for the his party's hate campaign and violence against north Indians and non-Marathis in Maharashtra. 

"It is not our duty to pass orders for registering cases," said a Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, warning an NGO against filing petitions for registration of cases under MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act). 

"Don't convert this court into police station," the Bench, also comprising Justice P Sathasivan, said, expressing its displeasure against the NGO, , for filing the petition. 

"How can we pass such type of directions," the Bench said referring to the petition in which the NGO had also sought that liability should be put on MNS and its chief for the damage caused to public property during the violence. 

The PIL had also sought a direction to the Election Commission for de-recognising MNS as a political party. 

Advocate Rakesh Kumar Singh said that the NGO was approaching the apex court as the fall out of the violence was not restricted to Maharashtra but had also spread to other parts of the country. 

He submitted that how can the apex court be silent when a political party was encouraging and spearheading violence against citizens, many of whom were students going to Maharashtra to appear in competitive examinations. 

Bureau Report 

SC asserts the judiciary’s primacy over the executive

Apex court collegium puts its foot down

J. Venkatesan

Refuses to reconsider elevation of 3 judges

New Delhi: Asserting the judiciary’s primacy over the executive in the appointment of judges, the Supreme Court collegium, headed by the Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, on Tuesday refused to reconsider its decision on elevation of three High Court Chief Justices as apex court judges.

The collegium reiterated its earlier recommendation on the elevation of the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court A.K. Ganguly, the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court R.M. Lodha and the Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court H.L. Dattu and sent back the file to the Union Law Ministry for being sent to President Pratibha Patil.

The recommendations were sent to the Law Ministry in the middle of October for forwarding the names to the President through the Prime Minister’s Office.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) fights Indian guest workers' cause

Leading US rights body fights Indian guest workers' cause

Tue, Nov 18 08:51 PM

New York, Nov 18 (IANS) A leading US rights body has joined a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, filed early this year on behalf of about 500 Indians, alleging they were trafficked into the US through the H-2B guest worker programme.

The guest workers, who were brought from India to work in shipyards after Hurricane Katrina, were misleadingly recruited, exploited and mistreated,  alleged in a statement Monday.

The federal government has fallen short of its responsibility to protect the rights of guest workers in this country, it alleged.

One of the most active civil-rights activist groups in this country, ACLU has charged that these workers were given dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent US residents and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices and threats of serious harm upon their arrival.

Observing that immigrant guest workers are among the most vulnerable groups of workers, Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program and co-counsel in the case, demanded that the government must take immediate action to stop sanctioning worker abuse and fix this dangerous system.

'Often paying exorbitant sums of money to deceitful and abusive recruiters in their home countries, these guest workers are subject to the control of a single 'employer-sponsor' once they've arrived in the US, with no safeguards in place to protect even the limited rights guaranteed by law,' he alleged.

The class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in March 2008 by Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Louisiana Justice Institute and the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.

It came after a campaign early this year spearheaded by the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, a project of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.

The lawsuit complains that recruiting agents hired by Signal International, the marine industry company, held guest workers' passports and visas; coerced them into paying extraordinary fees for recruitment, immigration processing and travel, and threatened the workers with serious legal and physical harm if they did not work under the Signal-restricted guest worker visa.

The complaint also charges that once in the US, the men were required to live in Signal's guarded, overcrowded labour camps, subjected to psychological abuse and defrauded out of adequate payment for their work.

Signal has denied the charges. 

courtesy