SC defers to Feb 10 hearing on PIL seeking removal of Shaheen Bagh protesters

Satya Prakash

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 7

The Supreme Court on Friday deferred to February 10 hearing on petitions seeking removal of protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Act to clear Kalindi Kunj Road that connects South Delhi to Noida.

“We’ll be in a better position to hear it on Monday,” Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul told the petitioners.

As the petitioners’ counsel said, “By Monday, the election will be over”, the Bench responded, “Exactly. That’s why on Monday.”

As protests against the CAA continued for more than 50 days in Shaheen Bagh area of Delhi, a PIL was filed in the Supreme Court on February 3 seeking a direction to the authorities to remove the protesters, contending they were causing hardship to people by blocking the Delhi-Noida road.

This was the second petition on the issue before the Supreme Court. Earlier, advocate Amit Sahni had challenged a Delhi High Court’s verdict refusing to issue directions for forthwith removal of the protesters.

Sahni – who challenged the January 14 order of the high court – demanded that the situation be supervised by a retired Supreme Court judge or a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court in order to pre-empt any violence.

Several men, women and children are sitting on an indefinite protest at Shaheen Bagh against the CAA for more than a month disrupting traffic flow on the Kalindi Kunj-Shaheen Bagh stretch – a major road link between South Delhi and Noida.

“It is disappointing that the state machinery is mute and silent spectator at hooliganism and vandalism of the protesters who are threatening the existential efficacy of the democracy and the rule of law and had already taken the law and order situation in their own hands,” read the petition filed by former Delhi MLA Nand Kishore Garg.

Restrictions have been in place on the Kalindi Kunj-Shaheen Bagh stretch and Okhla underpass, which have been closed on December 15, 2019 due to ongoing protests against the CAA and National Register of Citizens.

Garg demanded a set of comprehensive and exhaustive guidelines on outright restrictions for holding protests or agitations leading to obstruction of public place. The law enforcement machinery was being “held hostage to the whims and fancies of the protesters” who had blocked vehicular and pedestrian movement from the road connecting Delhi to Noida, Garg said.