Vande Bharat: Air India to operate 36 India-US flights from July 11-19

New Delhi, July 5 (IANS) National carrier Air India will operate 36 flights between India and the US under the Vande Bharat mission from July 11 to July 19.

In a tweet on Sunday, the airline said: “Tickets may be booked through Air India website only effective 2000 hours (IST) on 6th July 2020, equivalent to New York (EDT 1030 hrs of 6th July 2020), Chicago (CDT 0930 hrs of 6th July 2020) & San Francisco (PDT 0730 hrs of 6th July 2020).

In June the US Department of Transportation (DoT) had said that it would restrict charter flights from India, accusing New Delhi of engaging in “discriminatory and restrictive practices”.

Following the announcement, the Civil Aviation Ministry said that it has received requests from several countries, including the US, France and Germany for allowing their air carriers to participate in the transportation of passengers along the line being conducted by Air India under the Vande Bharat Mission and that the ministry is examining the requests.

Air India and domestic private carriers are allowed to operate flights under the program which has pre-fixed ticket charges.

The fourth phase of Vande Bharat Mission began on July 3 to bring back Indian stranded abroad amid the pandemic.

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Opening a new front in the civil rights campaign in the US, California has filed a case against technology company Cisco alleging discrimination against a Dalit employee. Amid the national protests against racial discrimination, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed the case on Monday in a federal court in the Silicon Valley naming the company and two former managers as defendants seeking to bring caste discrimination under the umbrella of unlawful discrimination banned by civil rights legislation enacted in 1964 that does not specify caste. The landmark federal Civil Rights Law specifies only race, color, religion, sex and national origin. DFEH alleged that “managers at Cisco’s San Jose headquarters campus, which employs a predominantly South Asian workforce, harassed, discriminated, and retaliated against an engineer because he is Dalit Indian.” The court papers seen by IANS said that the Dalit employee’s team was made up entirely of “higher caste” Indians who came to the US as adults and “imported the discriminatory (caste) system’s practices into their team and Cisco’s workplace”. The Dalit employee and the manager who supervised him are both IIT graduates who attended it at the same time, the complaint said, without specifying the institution. In addition to Cisco, court documents list Sundar Iyer, a “distinguished engineer at Cisco,” and Ramana Kompella as defendants in the case. The person allegedly discriminated against is described as a principal engineer but is not named and is shown in court documents as “John Doe,” a pseudonym used in the US legal system to protect identities or when a person’s identity is not known. The complaint said that Iyer told others in the company that the person allegedly discriminated against was a member of the scheduled caste and when he confronted the supervisor and complained to the human resources the supervisor and complained to the human resources department, a series of retaliation occurred. Full report on our website. Link in bio. #race #casteism #discrimination #color #cisco #california #dalitlivesmatter #dalit

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