Macron to hold crisis meeting after anti-government riots
Paris, Dec 2 : French President Emmanuel Macron is to hold a crisis meeting on Sunday after anti-government protests in Paris that left 133 people injured and a trail of destruction around the capital.
Macron is set to fly into Paris late morning after attending a G20 summit in Argentina and will meet the prime minister, interior minister and top security service officials at the presidential palace.
New figures released from the Paris police service showed that 412 people were arrested on Saturday during the worst clashes for years in the capital and 378 were still in custody.
A total of 133 had been injured, including 23 members of the security forces who battled rioters for most of the day in some of the most famous parts of the capital.
"I will never accept violence," Macron told a news conference in Buenos Aires before flying home.
"No cause justifies that authorities are attacked, that businesses are plundered, that passers-by or journalists are threatened or that the Arc du Triomphe is defiled," he said.
In a fresh incident on Sunday morning, a motorway pay booth was set on fire by arsonists in southern France near the city of Narbonne, a judicial source told AFP.
The main north-south motorway in eastern France, the A6, was also blocked by protesters near the city of Lyon on Sunday morning, its operator said.
The capital was calm, however, but as groups of workers moved around cleaning up the mess from the previous day, the scale of the destruction became clear.
In famed areas around the Champs-Elysees, the Louvre palace, the Opera or Place Vendome, smashed shop windows, broken glass and the occasional burned out car were testament to the violence.
Dozens of cars were torched by the gangs of rioters, some of whom wore gas masks and ski goggles to lessen the effects of tear gas which was fired continually by police.
One person was in a critical condition after protesters pulled down one of the huge iron gates of the Tuileries garden facing the Louvre museum, crushing several people.
Nearly 190 fires were put out and six buildings were set alight, the interior ministry said.
At the Arc de Triomphe, a monument to France's war dead, graffiti had been daubed, saying: "The yellow vests will win." -- What response? -
This was a reference to the so-called "yellow vest" anti-government protests that have swept France over the last fortnight, sparked initially by a rise in taxes on diesel.
The movement has since morphed into a broad opposition front to Macron, a 40-year-old pro-business centrist elected in May 2017. Violent anarchist and far-right groups have since infiltrated it and are thought to be behind Saturday's clashes.
Macron faces a dilemma in how to respond to the "yellow vests", not least because they are a grassroots movement with no formal leaders and a wide range of demands.
Some representatives have also insisted on public talks broadcast on TV.
"We have said that we won't change course. Because the course is good," government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told BFM television defiantly on Sunday morning.
"It's been thirty years that people change course every 18 months," he added, referring to Macron's presidential predecessors who have often caved in to pressure from French street protests.
Macron has so far refused to roll back taxes on fuel, which he says are needed to fund the country's transition to a low-emission economy.
And he remains a fervent defender of the tax cuts he has delivered for businesses and high-earners, which he believes were necessary to lower the country's chronic high unemployment.
"We're at a time when a bit of national unity around our security forces, around those who are really struggling would be a good thing for the country," Griveaux added.
An estimated 75,000 demonstrators, most of them peaceful, were counted across the country on Saturday, the interior ministry said.
The number was well below the first day of protests on November 17, which attracted around 282,000 people, and also down from the 106,000 who turned out last Saturday.
Interior Minister Castaner attributed the violence to "specialists in sowing conflict, specialists in destruction".
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Constitution bench verdict binding on benches of lesser strength, says SC
New Delhi (PTI): A judgement of a Constitution bench would be "binding" on benches of lesser strength, the Supreme Court has said while recalling an April 2022 verdict delivered by it.
In its order dated April 7, 2022, the apex court had held that a panchayat cannot claim ownership of the land which has been taken from the real owners from their permissible ceiling limits under the land law in Haryana.
The apex court had consequently said panchayats can only manage and control the land which has been taken from the owners and cannot claim title.
"It is pertinent to note here that for the land taken from the proprietors by applying pro-rata cut from the permissible ceiling limits of the proprietors, management and control alone vests with the panchayat but such vesting of management and control is irreversible and the land would not revert to the proprietors for redistribution as the common purposes for which land has been carved out not only include the present requirements but the future requirements as well," it had said.
The top court had delivered the verdict on a batch of appeals against a full bench verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had examined the legality of sub-section 6 of Section 2(g) of the Haryana Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961.
In a judgement delivered on Thursday, a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta said that when the high court verdict rested on the law laid down by the apex court's Constitution bench in 1966, "the least that was expected" of the court in the judgement under review was to explain as to why the high court was wrong in relying on the 1966 verdict.
"No law is required to state that a judgement of the Constitution bench would be binding on the benches of a lesser strength. Bhagat Ram (1966 verdict) has been decided by a strength of five judges, this court having a bench strength of two judges could not have ignored the law laid down by the Constitution bench in paragraph 5 in Bhagat Ram," the bench said.
The top court delivered its verdict on a plea seeking review of the April 2022 judgement.
It said that "ignoring" the law laid down by the Constitution bench and taking a view totally contrary to the same would amount to a material error, manifest on the face of the order.
"Ignoring the judgement of the Constitution bench, in our view, would undermine its soundness. The review could have been allowed on this short ground alone," it said.
While allowing the review petition, the bench said, "The judgement and order of this court dated April 7, 2022... is recalled and the appeal is restored to file."
The bench directed that the appeal be listed for hearing on August 7.
The top court observed it was settled that the review would be permissible only if there was a mistake or error apparent on the face of the record or any other sufficient reason was made out.
"The review of the judgement would be permissible only if a material error, manifest on the face of the order, undermines its soundness or results in miscarriage of justice. We are also aware that such an error should be an error apparent on the face of the record and should not be an error which has to be fished out and searched," it noted.
