M A I N   N E W S

US apex court upholds Bush view

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (PTI) — In a major setback to Democrat Presidential hopeful Al Gore, the US Supreme Court today overturned a Florida court ruling extending the deadline of manual recount of ballots.

Mr Gore’s Republican rival George W Bush had opposed the recount which had cut down his lead from 930 to just over 500 in Florida in the controversial Presidential elections.

The US Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, said the court was not clear on what grounds the Florida State Supreme Court had acted in extending the deadline by five days allowing hand recounted ballots to be included in the final tally of votes from Florida, setting aside the decision of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

“After reviewing the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court, we find that there is considerable uncertainty as to the precise grounds for the decision....” the nine judges of the apex court said.

Postal strike from today
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Dec 4 — Postal services across the country are likely to be affected as employees of the department will go on an indefinite strike seeking higher wages and benefits.

The strike will be effective from 6 a.m. tomorrow. The employees have decided to go ahead with the strike, which was announced last month, after the talks between the government and postal federations failed last evening, a union leader said.

The National Federation of Postal Employees, the Federation of National Postal Organisation and the Bharatiya Postal Employees Federation, claiming a total strength of 6 lakh employees, said the government had not honoured the bilateral settlement reached on May 1, 2000.

The demands of the employees are as follows: -Implementation of the positive recommendations of the Justice Charanjit Talwar Committee for the extra departmental employees with particular reference to grant of status and pension; Implementation of agreed proposals signed on December 18, 1998, which includes upgradation of pay scales of grade D employees; implementation of upgraded pay scales of postmen, mail guards with effect from January 1, 1996 and upgraded pay scales; upgradation of pay scales of head mail peons; upgraded pay scales to postal assistants, sorting assistants; upgraded pay scales to postal accounts staff; additional increments to drivers and workshop staff; upgradation of pay scale of stenographers; issue of casual labourers, ugradation of posts and filling up of all vacant posts in all cadres in the department.

Federation leaders said the Communications Minister, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan and the Secretary, Mr V.N. Som, had not given any positive indications to the employees.

Another leader said the arbitrary and unilateral decision of the Group of Ministers on Saturday rejecting all their demands had triggered the strike.

The last postal strike was in 1998 from July 9 to 16.