People's Democracy

    An Unwarranted Incursion, Says CITU

THE CITU secretariat has termed the Mumbai High Court decision to impose a penalty of Rs 20 lakh each on two political parties for calling a bandh last year as “an unwarranted incursion into the democratic right to protest.” It called for appropriate steps by the government of India to undo the pernicious impact of such judicial excesses.

In a statement issued on July 23, the CITU observed that it was becoming increasingly evident that judiciary in India is veering round to a position that civil and democratic rights are incompatible with liberalisation era. It cited the August 2003 pronouncements of the Supreme Court on the right to strike as an example.

The CITU deplored the Municipal Commissioner of the city joining the public interest litigation petition with an unsubstantiated allegation of a loss of Rs 50 crore owing to the bandh call. “The willingness of the judiciary to accept any allegation of use of ‘force’ on the part of democratic organisations as an axiomatic truth and proceed to issue directives on that basis is unacceptable to the general democratic movement. It has been found that even consumer forums had started awarding ‘compensation’ against imaginary loss on account of collective actions by workers in some cases”, stated the CITU. It reminded that the trade unions and other mass organisations as well as political parties had opposed the Supreme Court order of 1997 itself.

While welcoming the pro-active intervention of the judiciary in matters related to human rights abuses, environmental issues etc, the CITU felt that interventions such as the present one by the Mumbai High Court were against the basic spirit of the Indian Constitution which guarantees certain fundamental democratic rights, the right to protest being an alienable part thereof. (INN)