Social Media Has Made Protesting Near Power Redundant, Delhi’s Police Chief Tells Top Court

Delhi’s police commissioner has told India’s Supreme Court that the advent of technology and social media means the closeness of a protest site to the seat of government has “ceased to be relevant and has become redundant” — the reasoning behind stripping the capital of its best-known venue for dissent

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The affidavit, filed by Commissioner Anurag Kumar, defends the removal of Jantar Mantar from the list of designated protest sites, a decision taken weeks into a national agitation against the Chief Election Commissioner. Jantar Mantar, he argues, was never a site at all but a public road that “ought not to have been declared” one, and its designation was “contrary to public interest since the inception.” Three replacements have been named: Ramlila Maidan in central Delhi, CBD Ground in the east and Burari Ground in the north-west.

The commissioner set out why. The venue hosts more than 1,300 protests a year but can safely hold about 1,500 people, a limit exceeded on 20 July. Within three to four kilometres stand 78 foreign embassies and missions and 99 central government offices including the Reserve Bank of India, an area with a daily footfall of about 146,000 and some 64,000 residents. A central government super-speciality hospital sits in the immediate vicinity, and the police say congestion there can obstruct patients and ambulances. He also cited the proximity of the new Parliament building. A home ministry committee set up on 26 August had unanimously found the site unsuitable. He denied the de-notification followed a court order of 9 October, saying the change had been under consideration for some time.

The bench, headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, was hearing a batch of petitions arising from October’s protests. It accepted that no group can hold a site permanently. “You cannot occupy a site for all times to come,” the Chief Justice said. “Where will the farmers go? Where will the workers go? Where will the trade unions go? Where will the homeless go? Everybody has a right to protest.” Sites should be allotted for fixed periods, and orders granting or refusing permission must state their reasons.

But the court was markedly less receptive to the traders who brought one of the petitions. The Kirana Committee Delhi, seconded by the New Delhi Traders Association, wants protests barred for the two months of the festive season. Their counsel, Mukul Rohatgi, put losses at 20 billion rupees, said five million people live within a mile of Ramlila Maidan and that nobody was able to do business in Connaught Place.

Justice Bagchi asked whether that could be laid at the protesters’ door alone. “Can the lack of sales be attributed only to the protests? The economy may also be in a particular position. Barricades are also placed on the streets. What if the State forces shops to close?” He went further, observing that demonstrations generate commerce of their own for the hawkers and push-cart vendors who follow the crowds. “There is a protest economy,” he said. “Like in melas, there is a lot of business done.” Counsel for a journalists’ union made the same point: every protest site has vendors trading at it, and democracy works like that.

The court issued notice but declined any interim order, telling the traders they must first make the protest organisers parties to the case. Rohatgi conceded he had not.

Vocabulary was contested throughout. Senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy told the court there had been 7,000 illegal detentions during the October protests — “Mr Rohatgi said about ‘bleeding’. Are we not bleeding?” The solicitor general, Tushar Mehta, objected that these were not detentions but “removals”; a police affidavit says the Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and the MP Derek O’Brien were removed from South Avenue for breaching orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the provision that replaced the colonial-era power to prohibit assembly, and were not detained.

Separate petitions challenge the use of facial and iris recognition against protesters and students. Justice Bagchi asked whether such technology, said to be used to match images against national crime records, met the test of legitimate state interest. Mehta said only closed-circuit cameras were in use, and noted that hundreds of social media users were filming protesters live while objecting to the state doing so. Senior advocate Indira Jaising renewed a request for a woman-led committee and a special investigation team to examine complaints by women journalists covering the protests.

The question the court has not answered was put by counsel for M A Baby, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose petition against the de-notification leads the batch. Jantar Mantar has gone, and the replacement is now objected to as well. So where is anyone supposed to protest?