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AAP MLAs move high court for permission to protest outside homes of Amit Shah and L-G
The MLAs said on the one hand, the police have allowed the request of BJP councillors to protest and stage a sit-in before the residence of the CM, which is still ongoing, but on the other hand, the police have denied the petitioners the permission to protest outside Shah’s and L-G’s residences.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs Raghav Chadha and Atishi on Thursday moved to the Delhi high court, challenging the denial of permission by the Delhi Police to hold a sit-in protest outside the homes of Union home minister Amit Shah and lieutenant-governor Anil Baijal.
The two AAP legislators said they wanted to hold a four-people protest at each of the two sites against the alleged misappropriation of funds done by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led North Delhi Municipal Corporation, amounting to over Rs2,500 crore.
The plea also sought necessary arrangements to be made for the protest outside Shah’s house, along the lines of what has been permitted outside the residence of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, where the three mayors of Delhi have been sitting on a protest for the past 10 days, demanding that the Delhi government release funds to the BJP-led municipal bodies.
Appearing for the Delhi Police, advocate Gautam Narayan told the court that sit-ins can only be allowed in designated places and, hence, petitioners cannot be allowed to hold the protest outside the home minister’s or the L-G’s houses.
During the hearing, Chawla suggested to the police that the AAP leaders be allowed to hold the protest, subject to whatever restrictions the agency wants to impose on them, as only four persons would be staging the sit-in at each of the two sites.
“They will give an undertaking to abide by the restrictions,” the court said while asking the Delhi Police counsel to seek instructions. However, the counsel later told the court that they cannot allow protests in residential areas and cited an earlier Supreme Court.
The MLAs, through their counsel Manvinder Vashist (for Chadha) and Satvik Verma ( for Atishi), said on the one hand, the police have allowed the request of BJP councillors to protest and stage a sit-in before the residence of the CM, which is still ongoing, but on the other hand, the police have denied the petitioners the permission to protest outside Shah’s and L-G’s residences.
The petition said on December 12, the deputy commissioner of police (DCP), New Delhi, “illegally” rejected their request for holding peaceful protest in an “arbitrary manner” apparently fuelled by a political conspiracy, thereby infringing on their constitutional rights.
The plea also said the right to protest constituted a fundamental pillar of democracy and embodies the exercise of a number of indivisible, interdependent and interconnected human rights, in particular the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, and the right to freedom of thought.
The matter will now be heard on Friday.
Chadha later told HT, “The matter is subjudice and I will speak through my lawyer in the court but all that I am seeking is equality and parity.”