Railway Minister Piyush Goyal orders inquiry into Kushinagar train-school van accident

May 7: Accusing the BJP government in Karnataka of "medieval barbarism" and treating migrants as worse than "bonded labourers", CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday hit out at the state's decision to stop workers from returning to their homes in different parts of the country citing requirements of the construction sector.

The Karnataka government has withdrawn its request to the railways to run special trains to ferry migrant labourers to their home states, hours after builders met Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to apprise him of the problems the construction sector will face in case they left.

"This is worse than treating them as bonded labour. Does the Indian constitution exist? Are there any laws in the country? This BJP state government is throwing us back to medieval barbarism. This will be stoutly resisted,” Yechury said in a tweet.

The railways is running Shramik Special trains to ferry to their home towns migrants who were stranded at their places of work during the lockdown.

So far, it has run more than 115 such trains.

The Principal Secretary in the Revenue Department N Manjunatha Prasad, who is the nodal officer for migrants, had requested the South Western Railways on Tuesday to run two train services a day for five days except Wednesday, while the state government wanted services thrice a day to Danapur in Bihar. However, later, Prasad wrote another letter within a few hours that the special trains were not required. Several migrants in the city were desperate to return home as they were out of jobs and money.

Yechury also lashed out at the central government over reports that it owed states and industry Rs 3 trillion and accused the centre of shifting the burden of fighting the pandemic to the state governments.

“While shifting the entire burden of fighting the pandemic on to the State governments, Modi government is not even paying their legitimate dues. After November 2019, Centre has not paid the GST compensation dues for the rest of the financial year, i.e., March 2020.

“Modi government has the right to loot while crores of people & States are left with nothing but the right to starve?,” he tweeted.

New Delhi, Jul 21: The Supreme Court has asked the Ministry of Finance to look into a plea which claimed a loss of hundreds of crore every day, as the public sector banks are not invoking personal guarantees of big corporates who have defaulted on loans.

A bench comprising Justice R. F. Nariman and Navin Sinha asked the petitioners, Saurabh Jain and Rahul Sharma, who filed the PIL, to move the Finance Ministry with a representation within two weeks. The top court observed that the issue is important and the ministry should respond after the petitioner has made the representation before it. The matter had come up for hearing on Monday.

"We are of the view that at page 115 of the Writ Petition it has been made clear that the Ministry of Finance itself has, by a Circular, directed personal guarantees issued by promoters/managerial personnel to be invoked. According to the petitioners, despite this Circular, Public Sector Undertakings continue not to invoke such guarantees resulting in huge loss not only to the public exchequer but also to the common man", said the bench in its order.

Senior advocate Manan Mishra and advocate Durga Dutt, represented the petitioners.

Mishra contended before the bench that the statistics establish the public sector banks incurred a loss of approximately Rs 1.85 lakh crore in a financial year, and the banks did not take action to invoke personal guarantees of the biggest corporate defaulters.

The bench observed that since the petitioners claim the public sector undertakings are not complying with this circular, "We think you should first go to the ministry," said the bench.

Mishra argued before the bench that the loans from a common man are recovered through a mechanism where officials go through even the minutest detail, but promoters, chairpersons and other senior level functionaries of the big corporates find it convenient to get away by defaulting on loans.

The bench told the petitioner's counsel that the Finance Ministry has already issued a notification on this matter, and the petitioners should seek response from the ministry, and then move the top court. Mishra submitted before the bench to issue a direction to the Finance Ministry to give a response on their representation.

The bench said, "We allow the petitioners, at this stage, to withdraw this Writ Petition and approach the Ministry of Finance with a representation in this behalf. The representation will be made within a period of two weeks from today. The Ministry of Finance is directed to reply to the said representation within a period of four weeks after receiving such representation. With these observations, the petition is allowed to be withdrawn to do the needful."

Mishra contended before the bench seeking liberty to come back after a reply from the Finance Ministry. Justice Nariman said this option is open for petitioners after a decision has been taken by the ministry. "We will hear you", added Justice Nariman.