Supreme Court must deal with prime issues

India’s Supreme Court is engaged in an unusual experiment of trying to avert a confrontation between state power and people’s power at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi which has attracted worldwide attention as the site of an iconic struggle.

A confrontation between the state and the people on the streets usually ends in violence.  Many instances of police brutality were reported recently from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

At Shaheen Bagh, on Delhi’s border with UP, people, mostly Muslim women, have been camping out day and night for more than two months to register their opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act enacted by the Modi administration last December.

Shaheen Bagh-inspired protests are now going on at many other places in the country as well.

The Shaheen Bagh protest has been peaceful throughout. That leaves the police with no excuse to unleash repression, as they did when students of Jamia Milia Islamia, a Central university located nearby, protested against the CAA.      

Gun-wielding government supporters made a couple of attempted to create trouble at the protest site. The police did not stop them.  But volunteers at the protest site overpowered them and handed them over to the police. The police claimed the gun-trotters were mentally disturbed persons. But, as far is known, they have not committed them to mental care.  

After a child died at Shaheen Bagh, apparently due to exposure, the Supreme Court decided to look into the goings-on, and consider banning children from protest sites.

The child, only a few months old, had not gone to the protest site on its own. It was there with its mother. Later the court shifted the focus of its inquiry from the case of the child to the blockade of a road which forced vehicles to make a long detour.

While acknowledging that people have a right to protest, the Supreme Court bench observed that they could not block roads as it interfered with the rights of others.

The Shaheen Bagh protest was not called by any person or organisation. There was, therefore, no one whom the court could summon and call to account. It got around the problem by naming Sanjay Hegde and Sadhana Ramachandan, two advocates, as interlocutors to talk to the protesters. It asked former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahid Habibullah to assist them.

The trio made two visits to Shaheen Bagh, assured the protesters that the Supreme Court recognises their right to protest and urged them to move to another site to avoid traffic blockade.

The protesters refused to move from Shaheen Bagh, saying they felt secure there. They pointed out that they were helping school buses and ambulances to pass through the road without hindrance.

They said traffic between Delhi and UP was disrupted not because they occupied a part of a road but because the police had blocked other roads in the vicinity. On Monday the interlocutors submitted their report to the court in a sealed envelope.

In a separate report, Habibullah upheld the protesters’ contention that traffic flow was disrupted not by them but by the police, which had closed nearby roads for no reason.

Police claimed they had blocked the roads to ensure the security of the protesters. The court’s intervention in the Shaheen Bagh matter has had the salutary effect of putting an end to provocative actions by the government’s supporters in the Shaheen Bagh area.

But exhortations to violence by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, including those holding responsible positions, are continuing.  

The best contribution that the Supreme Court can make at this juncture is to deal with prime issues, and not fritter away time and energy on peripheral matters.

It can carry conviction with not just the Shaheen Bagh protesters but people all across the country who have come out against the CAA by speedily pronouncing judgment in the petitions challenging its validity and set at rest doubts among the people that it runs counter to the basic principles of the Constitution.

The court is yet to take up a host of petitions questioning the government’s action in altering the status the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, after placing the region under  lockdown in August last year.

The court must realise that its failure to take up these issues quickly is severely eroding its own credibility and the trust it earned over the past seven decades through timely interventions.