On Saturday, Delhi staged one of the most expensive non-events in its history. For a rally that was never allowed to assemble, more than 2,000 people were detained. Thousands of police and paramilitary personnel were deployed. Internet was suspended in the central business district, and dozens of metro stations and markets were shut. Whatever one thinks of the demand, the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, the State’s response had one clear aim: to ensure that the event could not be said to have occurred.

Jantar Mantar, an observatory built to chart the heavens, was sealed behind barricades. Counsel will recognise the technique. Section 163 of the BNSS permits prohibitory orders in cases of urgency and apprehended danger. In the past week it has been applied across an entire district, so the apprehension has apparently become the permanent condition.

Article 19(1)(b) guarantees the right to assemble “peaceably and without arms.” The text contains no clause conditioning the right on a permission, a venue, or a mood. The Supreme Court has now asked the organisers to bring an urgent plea on the right to protest and the restrictions imposed. The case will be an interesting test. When every exception is applied everywhere, the rule ceases to be a rule.

The citizens, meanwhile, showed the usual constitutional creativity. Shut out of the main venue, the Cockroach Janta Party’s supporters turned up at Dilli Haat, at Rajiv Chowk Metro, outside the Supreme Court and on the Yamuna. The police redeployed after each one. The exercise looked less like crowd control than like a game of tag in which one side held all the barricades and the other held the map.

The BJP called the protesters anarchists and alleged foreign forces. Anarchists, one notes, tend not to ask for the resignation of a constitutional functionary through a prescribed demand. They ask for it through the press, the street and, eventually, the courts. That is, rather inconveniently for everyone, the system working as designed.

Satire. The piece targets the policing and the tension between permission and peaceful assembly, not the merits of the electoral roll dispute, on which the government and opposition disagree.

Social media version

Delhi on Saturday: 2,000+ detained, internet suspended, metro stations shut, trains cancelled, all to stop a rally that hadn’t happened yet.

Jantar Mantar was built to watch the stars. It now watches barricades.

Article 19(1)(b): “peaceably and without arms.”
Section 163: “have you tried not?”

Name your movement after a cockroach and expect it to survive the lockdown. 🪳