The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that public places cannot be occupied indefinitely while delivering its verdict on the right of protests in a petition for moving protests in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to a designated location.
Advocate Amit Sahni filed the petition in January against the blockage of roads by protestors and said there should be no hindrance in the right of free movement of the public due to protests. He asked Delhi High Court to intervene positively in the matter.
“Dissent and democracy go hand in hand, but then the demonstrations expressing dissent have to be done in designated places alone. The present case was not even one of the protests taking place in an undesignated area, but was a blockage of a public way which caused grave inconvenience to commuters,” observed a bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul. The verdict was being reserved by the top court on September 21 to deliberate on “the need to balance the right to protest with the right of mobility by other people”. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta observed that the Right to Protest is a fundamental right subjecting to reasonable restrictions.
The apex court found the blocking of the road by Shaheen Bagh protestors unacceptable and it is the duty of the administration to remove such road blockades. “Unfortunately, despite a lapse of a considerable period of time, there was neither any negotiations nor any action by the administration, thus warranting our intervention,” the Court witnessed. “The courts are not meant to give a shoulder to the administration to fire their guns from,” said Justice Kaul.
A sit-in-protest from December to March against the CAA was organized in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi. On March 23, the places were evacuated in the wake of coronavirus pandemic and the orders of government seeking lockdown in the entire country.