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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Bhajan’s lawsuit against EOT scheduled for Nov 12

by

Derek Achong
1236 days ago
20211001
Veera Bhajan

Veera Bhajan

Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) lay-as­ses­sor Veera Bha­jan’s law­suit against the EOT and chair­man Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael over al­leged moves to block her from tak­ing up her ap­point­ment, is sched­uled to go on tri­al on No­vem­ber 12. 

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in the case and set No­vem­ber 12 for oral sub­mis­sions. 

Ac­cord­ing to her court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the is­sue arose af­ter Bha­jan re­ceived her ap­point­ment from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes on March 17. 

Bha­jan claimed that she made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to con­tact the tri­bunal in or­der to take up her ap­point­ment be­fore Prow­ell-Raphael re­spond­ed on May 19. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, Prow­ell-Raphael claimed that her ser­vices were not re­quired as the tri­bunal did not have the “fi­nan­cial where­with­al” to ac­com­mo­date a sec­ond lay-as­ses­sor and that the tri­bunal’s cur­rent work­flow did not re­quire it. Prow­ell-Raphael al­so ac­cused Bha­jan of us­ing im­prop­er chan­nels to en­quire about her po­si­tion.

In a le­gal opin­ion is­sued by the tri­bunal’s le­gal re­search of­fi­cer Mintri Be­har­ry­lal on Au­gust 26, the tri­bunal de­part­ed from its ini­tial rea­sons and claimed that the Pres­i­dent was wrong to ap­point Bha­jan, as she (Bha­jan) did not have suf­fi­cient qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the post as re­quired un­der the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act (EOA).

Be­har­ry­lal claimed that when Bha­jan was first ap­point­ed, Prow­ell-Raphael in­formed the Pres­i­dent that she (Bha­jan) did not qual­i­fy for ap­point­ment as she did not have the pre­req­ui­site of 10 years ex­pe­ri­ence as an at­tor­ney. 

She claimed that af­ter the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Pres­i­dent re­voked the ap­point­ment and reap­point­ed Bha­jan based on hav­ing com­bined ex­pe­ri­ence in law and so­cial work for 10 years. She al­leged that Bha­jan still did not qual­i­fy un­der com­bined ex­pe­ri­ence.

The opin­ion al­so stat­ed that Prow­ell-Raphael had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion to be con­sult­ed by the Pres­i­dent be­fore the ap­point­ment and would have point­ed out de­fi­cien­cies in can­di­dates. 

Through the law­suit, Bha­jan is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the tri­bunal and Prow­ell-Raphael that they act­ed in ex­cess of their ju­ris­dic­tion and in abuse of their pow­er. She is al­so seek­ing an or­der quash­ing the de­ci­sion and an­oth­er man­dat­ing that she take up the ap­point­ment. 

Bha­jan, who is claim­ing that she quit her law prac­tice to take up her ap­point­ment, is al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the month­ly re­mu­ner­a­tion she was sup­posed to re­ceive af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed. 

While the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was list­ed as a re­spon­dent to Bha­jan’s claim, it sup­port­ed her le­gal ac­tion when her at­tor­ney Ra­jiv Chaitoo wrote to it be­fore fil­ing the law­suit. 

“It ap­pears that hav­ing re­gard to the le­git­i­ma­cy of the claims ad­vanced by your client, we ac­cept that Ms Bha­jan was en­ti­tled to be ap­point­ed and to be paid from the date of the ap­point­ment, thus leav­ing any fur­ther de­fence of the ac­tions of the Chair­man, sole­ly at the be­hest of the Chair­man,” at­tor­ney Sarah Sinanan said in the re­sponse from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Sec­re­tari­at. 

The AG’s Of­fice said that it could not rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion as it had no pow­er over the tri­bunal or Prow­ell-Raphael. 

“Re­gret­tably the ac­tion which your client com­plains are not the ac­tions which were tak­en by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or its agents and which can there­fore be re­voked by that of­fice,” Sinanan said.

Un­der the EOA, the tri­bunal con­sists of a Chair­man and two lay-as­ses­sors ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. While the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) ad­vis­es the Pres­i­dent on the ap­point­ment of the Chair­man, the lay-as­ses­sors are se­lect­ed sole­ly by the Pres­i­dent. 

The tri­bunal is man­dat­ed to hear and de­ter­mine dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints un­der the leg­is­la­tion, which are re­ferred to it by the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion. 

Sec­tion 42 (7) of the leg­is­la­tion pre­scribes the cir­cum­stances in which a lay as­ses­sors ap­point­ment may be ter­mi­nat­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Chair­man. 

The cir­cum­stances are bank­rupt­cy, mis­be­hav­ing in of­fice, be­ing nom­i­nat­ed or ap­point­ed to an­oth­er of­fice, be­ing in­volved in a mat­ter or in­ter­est which ap­pears to the Chair­man to be in­com­pat­i­ble with the func­tion of lay-as­ses­sors or be­ing in­ca­pable of per­form­ing their du­ties, for what­ev­er rea­son.

Bha­jan, who was born with­out arms, was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver) in 2011. 

She is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Alvin Fitz­patrick, SC, Ra­jiv Per­sad, Michael Rooplal, Shari Fitz­patrick, and Gabriel Her­nan­dez. The EOT and its chair­man are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, and Ka­ri­na Singh. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Rishi Dass. 


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