The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that public places cannot be occupied indefinitely, while hearing some petitions against anti-citizenship law protests. Last year in Delhi\u2019s Shaheen Bagh, protestors \u2013 mostly women \u2013 sat opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) for months.<\/p>\n
The court said that \u201cwe appreciate the right to protest peacefully and it can be [held] at designated places only.\u201d The apex court on Wednesday observed: \u201cWe have to make it clear that public places cannot be occupied indefinitely whether in Shaheen Bagh or elsewhere. These sort of protests are not acceptable and authorities should act\u2026 they must keep such spaces free from obstruction\u2026 the administration cannot wait for orders from court to clear [the protest sites]..\u201d The court also observed that \u201cdissent and democracy go hand in hand\u201d, said a report by NDTV<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n A three-judge bench made the observations while hearing petitions to decide whether there can be \u201cindefinite period of protests\u201d in a common area that allegedly created inconvenience for others. Earlier, the court had observed on this matter\u00a0that there cannot be a \u201cuniversal policy\u201d as circumstances may vary from case to case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shaheen Bagh in Delhi was the epicentre of anti-CAA protests. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":8068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[220,57,37,416,120],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation","8":"tag-anti-caa-protests","9":"tag-bjp","10":"tag-nrc","11":"tag-opposition-parties-in-india","12":"tag-shaheen-bagh"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10570"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=10570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}