A protest is an event or activity where individuals come together with others to openly express their feelings about something that is happening in society. In recent years, there have been various protests across the country for various reasons, for example the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) (CAA) Act, 2019 in Shaheen Bagh in Delhi or the year-long farmers` protest against the three agricultural laws from 2020 to 2021. India`s constitution gives its citizens the right to peaceful protest. In this article, we will examine in detail the constitutional right to protest, certain restrictions related to the law, its meaning and certain decisions of the Supreme Court on it. Recent experience has shown that the political establishment encourages the use of police powers to make the exercise of these rights weak and unlawful. The Anna team struggled several times to get a central place available to organize their event. Police powers have been used to dictate that the size of the protest must be tiny, not large. When large open areas such as ramlila-Maidan and other centrally located locations are available, recent experience has shown that police discretion has been used to discourage people from using such places to stage protests. The Supreme Court has taken note of some of these practices.
When combined, these rights allow anyone to peacefully assemble and demonstrate against the actions or inactions of the state. The protests are pro-democracy, and the purpose of the protest is to protect the integrity of the country`s shortcomings. To learn more about freedom of speech and expression, click here. Even if we ignore the concerns outlined above, the court`s attempt to link the introduction of a legal challenge to the organization of a protest, and then to suggest that the former may be a ground for restricting the latter, is simply absurd. There are at least three clear reasons why such a proposal as a whole is illogical. Recent cases of protests against “sub-judice” issues Public acts as a watchdog and monitors every movement of the government. There have been many cases where the public has acted as a watchdog, and a number of protests have taken place in response to injustice or abuse of power. When Indian democracy was terrorized during the state of emergency, people of all political persuasions protested against the abuse of power. For example; Last year, following protests against the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, several petitions were filed with the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the legislation.
In these cases, the Court stressed that the right to protest and the right to challenge legislation are not mutually exclusive. In such a decree, which was adopted on February 17, 2020 in the case of Amit Sahni v. The Chief of Police, Judge SK Kaul and KM Joseph explicitly stated that the preventive measures taken by the State through the imposition of Article 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the detention of demonstrators in vans and the depot on the outskirts of the city, arrests, registration of false FIR, recourse to Lathi charges, are not only illegal, but also limit the exercise of these rights. “As soon as the party turns to the court to challenge the validity of the law, what is the issue of the protests that follow? Once you came to court, you exercised your option,” judge AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar observed when they heard a request from the Kisan Mahapanchayat Farmers` Union asking for permission to hold a satyagraha. After that, however, the verdict takes a strange turn. It forces protesters to obey any legitimate order. Admittedly, neither the imposition of Article 144 in the present case, nor the withdrawal of the licence nor the manner in which the expulsion was carried out were lawful. Why would the protesters have accepted such an order? How, then, can the principle of “contributory negligence” be imposed on a demonstrator who has exercised his fundamental right to demonstrate? The concept of “contributory negligence” arose from a law of tortious liability. It cannot be used to dilute the scope and exercise of a fundamental right. “Contributory negligence” is a defence in which an aggrieved person could have acted in his or her own interest and exercised the diligence and prudence required not to contribute to the breach. This is a ground that can be invoked as a criminal defence.
Your request to restrict the exercise of the fundamental right is totally unjustified and legally untenable. It also sought to examine whether the applicants in the case, the Kisan Mahapanchayat, can continue to protest against the controversial new agricultural laws once they have already appealed to the court to question the constitutionality of those laws. “Once the laws have been challenged in court, protesting farmers should trust the system and the courts instead of continuing the protests,” the bank noted. The active use of the right to protest ensures that people play the role of watchdogs, constantly monitor the actions of the government and ensure their justice. The significance of the protests is as follows: during the struggle for freedom, Indians laid the foundation for liberation largely through peaceful protests. In 1915, Gandhi introduced ji Satyagraha, a movement firmly based on nonviolent resistance that retained truth as its strength. And later in the years, many movements were based on the peaceful non-violent march that led to the unleashing of the “Aazadi” Indians.
