Right to life, liberty available even to foreign nationals, says Supreme Court The right to life and liberty,

enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, is available even to foreign nationals, the Supreme Court observed on Wednesday and quashed an FIR registered by the Maharashtra government against three Ugandan citizens, including an Advisor to the President of Uganda. A vacation Bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik and Ranjan Gogoi slammed the State government for filing a criminal case of cheating based on a complaint given by Videocon. The Bench said the action of the Mumbai police in registering the FIR had brought bad name to India. It directed the police to release their passports immediately. Article 21 of the Constitution [right to life and liberty] applies to all citizens, whether Indian or foreign nationals. Their right to liberty could not be restrained by the police due to a business dispute. Our country gets a bad name because of acts of a few police officers and it is unfortunate that the Mumbai police, instead of protecting the rights of these foreign nationals, filed an FIR against them and the charges are baseless. The Bench said no offence had been made out against them. Extortion charge Isacc Isanga Musumba, lawyer and senior Advisor to the President of Uganda (equivalent to the post of a Minister); Mawanda Michael Maranga, Member of Parliament; and Magoola Mathias, a businessman, were charged with extortion by the police on a complaint by Videocon officials and their passports were impounded. Counsel for the petitioners told the court that they came to India in April to settle a business dispute with Videocon. Stopped from leaving In their petition, they submitted that from April 19 they were restrained by the police from leaving the country without a formal order of arrest. The lookout notice issued against them was a colourable exercise of police powers smeared with malice, ill will and was grossly spiteful, prejudicing thereby their fundamental rights. ]They said the high handed and illegal restraints put up by the police on them required to be looked into seriously in the context of friendly relations between two countries. Cauvery Water Scheme, 2013 Notified
The Union government notified Cauvery Water (Implementation of the Order of 2007) Scheme, 2013 to implement the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT), 2007. Under the scheme, a supervisory committee will be formed as notified by the ministry of Water Resources. The committee will be headed by the Water Resources Secretary, while Chief Secretaries of the Cauvery basin States/Union Territory (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala) will be the members. The Central Water Commission (CWC) chairman will also be a member and the CWCs chief engineer will be

the Member- Secretary. The headquarters of the committee will be in New Delhi. The scheme will be in place till the Cauvery Management Board is constituted as mentioned in the award. The chairman of the Committee may apply to the Supreme Court for appropriate directions with notices to other States if he thinks it is necessary. As per the notification of the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT), 2007 in February 2013, the Cauvery River Authority (CRA), chaired by the Prime Minister, and the Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC), headed by the Water Resources Secretary are no longer functioning. Both committees were formed as per the directives of the Supreme Court to monitor the implementation of the interim orders of the tribunal. Supreme Court of India in its interim order on 10 May 2013 had directed the union government to constitute a supervisory committee for implementation of the final order of the CWDT dated 5 February 5, 2007 as notified on 19 February 2013. The Tribunal which included Chairman Justice N.P. Singh and members N.S. Rao and Sudhir Narain was set up in 1990. It had determined the total availability of water in the Cauvery basin at 740 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet at the Lower Coleroon Anicut site in a Unanimous award in February 2007. In the final order the Tribunal gave Tamil Nadu 419 TMC of water (as against the demand of 562 TMC); Karnataka 270 TMC (as against its demand of 465 TMC); Kerala 30 TMC and Puducherry 7 TMC. It had reserved 10 TMC for environmental protection.