Shaheen Bagh of Delhi became the epicenter of protests against the CAA.
New Delhi:
The right to protest and express dissent comes with certain duties and cannot be carried out “anytime, anywhere,” the Supreme Court said in an order, dismissing a petition for review on protests against the citizenship law held. at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi in 2019.
Twelve activists had filed a petition for a review on last year’s Supreme Court ruling calling the protests against the citizenship law in Shaheen Bagh illegal.
“The right to protest cannot be anytime and anywhere. There may be some spontaneous protests, but in case of dissent or protracted protest, you cannot continue the occupation of a public place that affects the rights of others,” he said The three-judge court of Justices SK Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari said while dismissing a petition from Shaheen Bagh resident Kaniz Fatima and others seeking a review of the October 7 last year verdict. Although the request for review was decided on February 9, the order arrived last night.
The three-judge bench reiterated that public places cannot be occupied for protests and that public protests should be “only in designated areas.”
“Dissent and democracy go hand in hand,” the highest court had observed in its October 2020 verdict, and stressed that “protests like these are not acceptable.”
Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh emerged as the epicenter of the anti-CAA protests in 2019, where protesters, mostly women and children, sat for more than three months.
The Shaheen Bagh protests had received worldwide attention and Time magazine honored the 82-year-old Bilkis. dadi, the face of the movement, as one of the 100 “most influential people of 2020”.
Critics have called the controversial citizenship law, which the government says allows citizenship to non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan if they escaped religious persecution and entered India before 2015, is “anti-Muslim.”
A massive wave of protests swept the nation against the CAA before the new coronavirus pandemic forced the majority of the population to stay indoors and the government announced one of the world’s strictest closures in March of last year.
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