indica News Bureau-
L&T Infotech Ltd, a leading information technology (IT) provider from India and part of the Larsen & Toubro engineering conglomerate, has been charged with discrimination in a lawsuit filed in New York by former employees.
This adds to the flurry of discrimination complaints being filed against Indian IT companies. Most of the complaints accuse the companies of discriminating against American job applicants and filling up vacancies with people hired from India or South Asia.
The latest case has been filed before the US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), and alleges that the company was partial to South Asians when hiring at its US branch, the website trak.in reported.
Earlier, Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT firm, had faced a similar lawsuit but was cleared of the charge by the courts.
The lawsuit against L&T Infotech has been filed by two former employees, both white Americans, who allege that 95% of the Mumbai-based company’s workforce of 7,500 employees in the US comprises people of South Asian descent, mostly visa holders from India.
They have also accused L&T Infotech of submitting fraudulent letters with visa applications, mostly H-1B, to maximize the number of South Asians it hires.
The lawsuit describes how the company would send a letter to the US government, supposedly from a client, attesting to the need for certain employees to work in America. The letters were drafted and signed by L&T Infotech itself, according to the complaint.
In one example cited in the complaint, L&T Infotech allegedly submitted fake invitation letters purportedly signed by Apple Inc. The company is now being investigated by the US Customs and Immigration Services.
