DC Edit | Govt Stays Determined To Stifle Anti-SIR protests

As ‘cockroach’ protesters took to the streets of New Delhi again on Friday, more questions have arisen over where the protests are heading and whether the government reaction to them, which has thus far been only about throttling the voices of dissent, will change at least to grant freedom of expression of disagreement in a highly regulated environment.

Sustained demonstrations of youth anger have evolved from starting as protests against the misconduct of entrance tests and the leaking of question papers to seeking the ouster of the chief election commissioner as a first step to electoral reforms and on to a wider fight over the fundamental right to protest after two CJP members were ordered into judicial custody for five days when they entered Jantar Mantar, by then denotified as a protest site.

The hostile attitude of the establishment has led to bizarre methods of strangling the protests rather than speaking to protesters as they did when question paper leaks were the leading cause of protests. A siege mentality was very much in evidence as forces brutalised sections of protesters — journalists were not spared either — to retain control of protest sites that were made off-limits to the public.

Protests the world over trigger different responses from governments but France, which is seeing countrywide student protests, may have found a kind of balance in keeping the space for expressing dissent open while cracking down on its excesses like rioting that often accompany large scale public protests.

There have been several examples of police excesses in India as law & order keeping forces demonstrate their power to muzzle and strength in handling protests. The fact that Opposition parties have swung into action to make capital out of youth anger — which is their democratic right too — and attempt to capture power has seen the situation explode into an incendiary political scenario.

The Supreme Court may have ticked off the Leader of the Opposition for leading a crowd towards the supreme seat of the judiciary to which people of a democracy must be respectful because it is considered a fair arbiter. But the courts are duty bound to examine the fundamental charge against the Election Commission of slanting the electoral system, which has been the fount of India in its democratic history, to facilitate the powers that be to consolidate their position.

The court did warn that the government was taking a hammer to kill a fly as it pursued the path of total opposition to protests, like converting the capital into a fortress and stopping all transport and diverting traffic to seal the regular protest sites. Curiously, some non-BJP governments, too, did take measures to curb protests.

The Bangladesh example being quoted of civil demonstrations bringing about a regime change militates against basic democratic principles since a nation in which parties opposed to the prevailing establishment either boycott the polls or are banned from participating in elections, as was the case with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party in the most recent polls, cannot be considered a “mother of democracy.”

The issue is not whether the CEC, seen as the arch villain who tweaked Form 6 to make staying on the rolls a problem for even legitimate voters, goes or not. It is up to the top court to say if he did indeed sully the process to the extent of casting serious doubts on the legitimacy of the revised poll rolls.

What must be decided upon soon is whether the entire SIR process, which had the blessings of the SC, should be considered illegal and the rolls handled now in such a way as to be inclusive of all save those who have either died or are ineligible to vote as they cannot prove they are genuine citizens of the country.