Last Saturday, Delhi resembled a city under siege. Barricades dominated its streets, public transport was disrupted, and an extraordinary security deployment sought to prevent thousands of demonstrators from assembling. The scale of the crackdown recalled some of the darkest episodes in India’s democratic history, prompting one detained Opposition leader to remark that even during the Emergency, the authorities had not gone this far.
The immediate trigger was a protest organised by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and others, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of manipulation of electoral rolls to benefit the ruling party. But the confrontation quickly acquired a larger significance. At stake was not merely the fate of a political demonstration, but the relationship between constitutional freedoms, executive power and the limits of policing in a democracy.
A CAPITAL UNDER SIEGE
CJP leaders Abhijit Dipke, Saurav Das and Asutosh Ranka were reportedly detained by policewomen who boarded their flight from Mumbai shortly after it landed in Delhi. They were taken to separate locations, preventing them from joining thousands of protesters who had gathered across a heavily barricaded capital. “This did not happen even during the Emergency,” Dipke said.
Barricades seemed to define Delhi more conspicuously than its historical monuments. More than 50 metro stations reportedly had their entrances and exits closed. Trains and buses were prevented from entering the capital, internet services were restricted around the protest area, and police personnel, reinforced by paramilitary forces, visited neighbourhoods where students rented accommodation. The alleged purpose was to warn residents and discourage them from joining the demonstrations.
YouTuber Dhruv Rathee was reportedly picked up from his home in Gurgaon while asleep, an episode that illustrated the lengths to which the authorities appeared willing to go to prevent the protests from gathering momentum.
People were rounded up at state borders, transit hubs and surrounding streets. Local stadiums were converted into temporary detention centres.
The irony was difficult to miss: the State appeared to be mobilising an extraordinary security apparatus not simply to protect the capital from disorder, but to contain a protest directed at the country’s chief election official.
Most demonstrators were young people in their twenties. Among them was the charismatic left-wing student leader Neha Bora, wearing a red T-shirt bearing the slogan “One Piece”. Those detained reportedly included three former chief ministers—Mamata Banerjee, Pinarayi Vijayan and Arvind Kejriwal—as well as lawyers, academics, political activists and concerned citizens, including Yogendra Yadav and left-wing leader Brinda Karat.
The numbers reportedly swelled to more than 7,000, including ordinary citizens who had joined the demonstrations in support of the CJP.
The generational character of the protests became part of the story itself. The excessive police presence and the alleged heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators prompted sarcastic references to “ErmerGenX”, a play on the Emergency declared by former prime minister Indira Gandhi and the fact that many of those on the streets belonged to Generation Z.
The phrase captured the protesters’ central accusation: that a government elected through democratic processes was responding to dissent with methods that appeared fundamentally at odds with democratic freedoms.
THE SUPREME COURT STEPS IN
The crackdown soon acquired a judicial dimension.
Lawyers, some of whom alleged that they had been assaulted, approached the Supreme Court. The Court reportedly convened a special sitting on Sunday, with a bench, comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, hearing a series of petitions.
The same bench had reportedly heard pleas on October 10 from senior advocates challenging the closure of public transport and the disruption caused to ordinary citizens. Their argument was that the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental constitutional freedom and that security measures cannot become a pretext for paralysing public life.
According to the account of the proceedings, the Court directed that barricades be removed unless absolutely necessary, metro stations resume normal operations, restrictions on public movement be eased and internet services restored. It also addressed the continued use of Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which empowers authorities to issue orders intended to prevent imminent danger or public disturbance.
The Court reportedly called for an alternative site for demonstrations, recognising the need to reconcile the right to protest with the competing interests of public order and access to public spaces.
The legal position, however, requires careful distinction. The right to protest is constitutionally protected, but it is not unlimited. The State may impose lawful, necessary and proportionate restrictions. The crucial question is whether the measures adopted are genuinely required to address a demonstrable threat or are so sweeping that they effectively extinguish the right itself.
That distinction lies at the heart of the controversy in Delhi.
The three CJP leaders were reportedly released by a magistrate on the same day, although seven other protesters remained in custody on allegations of assaulting police officers. Senior advocates, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Menaka Guruswamy, were among those involved in challenging the restrictions and alleged illegal detentions.
The government, meanwhile, appeared determined to stand its ground.
The confrontation soon attracted international attention. News organisations, including the BBC, Al Jazeera and The New York Times, reported on the protests. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also reportedly expressed concern over allegations of mass detentions and called on Indian authorities to respect peaceful protest and release anyone detained arbitrarily.
The government rejected the criticism, describing the concerns as misplaced and the UN body’s statement as unwarranted interference in India’s internal affairs.
The dispute thus acquired another dimension: whether criticism of a government’s handling of domestic protests constitutes legitimate international scrutiny of human rights or inappropriate interference in a sovereign state’s affairs.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CATCH-22
The right to protest in India emerges principally from Article 19(1)(a), which protects freedom of speech and expression, and Article 19(1)(b), which guarantees the right to assemble peacefully and without arms.
Neither freedom is absolute. Articles 19(2) and 19(3) permit reasonable restrictions on specified constitutional grounds, including public order. The challenge is to ensure that such restrictions remain exceptions justified by necessity rather than instruments routinely deployed to suppress dissent.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised this distinction.
In Himat Lal K Shah vs Commissioner of Police (1973), the Court affirmed the right to hold public meetings on streets while recognising the state’s authority to regulate their use. Regulation, however, cannot become an arbitrary or blanket prohibition.
In S. Rangarajan vs P Jagjivan Ram (1989), the Court emphasised that democratic freedoms cannot be curtailed merely because their exercise is inconvenient or unpopular. The judgment reinforced the principle that restrictions must be justified by necessity rather than speculative apprehensions.
The Ramlila Maidan Incident case (2012), arising from a police crackdown on a gathering, underscored the constitutional implications of the use of force against peaceful demonstrators. The Court examined the conduct of the authorities and the need to protect fundamental rights when dispersing assemblies.
In Amit Sahni vs Commissioner of Police (2020), commonly associated with the Shaheen Bagh protests, the Court clarified that public spaces and roads cannot be occupied indefinitely in ways that prevent their use by others. The judgment recognised that the right to protest must be reconciled with the public’s right to free movement.
The decision in Anuradha Bhasin vs Union of India (2020), concerning restrictions on internet access in Jammu and Kashmir, further reinforced the requirement that restrictions affecting fundamental freedoms must be justified, reviewed and proportionate.
Taken together, these judgments establish neither an unconditional right to demonstrate anywhere nor an unrestricted licence for the State to prohibit assemblies. They demand a constitutional balance grounded in legality, necessity and proportionality.
That balance is particularly important when the authorities resort to force. In Anita Thakur vs State of Jammu and Kashmir (2016), the Supreme Court examined allegations of excessive police force during a demonstration and emphasised the importance of lawful and restrained policing.
The question raised by the Delhi crackdown is whether the measures used against demonstrators satisfied these standards. Television footage and allegations by protesters have fuelled doubts about the necessity and proportionality of the police response. Those allegations require investigation, and the legal conclusions must ultimately rest on the evidence and the applicable law.
DETENTION, ARREST AND THE LIMITS OF PREVENTIVE POLICING
The distinction between arrest and preventive detention is central to the controversy.
An arrest is a formal exercise of legal authority that triggers procedural safeguards. Preventive action, by contrast, may be undertaken to avert an anticipated breach of peace, subject to the relevant statutory conditions and constitutional protections.
But the terminology cannot determine the legality of an action. A person cannot be deprived of liberty arbitrarily merely because the police describe the measure as preventive detention rather than arrest.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against treating the existence of a power to arrest as sufficient justification for exercising it. The principle is particularly relevant when people are detained for several hours and subsequently released without a case being registered.
Article 22 of the Constitution provides safeguards concerning arrest and detention. Other constitutional protections, including Article 21’s guarantee of life and personal liberty, also remain relevant.
The police must therefore explain not merely why preventive powers exist, but why their exercise was necessary in each relevant circumstance.
The scale of the deployment in Delhi raises additional questions. For the October 10 demonstrations, the city reportedly placed nearly 27,000 security personnel on duty, including personnel brought in from neighbouring states and paramilitary forces.
Such a deployment may be defended by the authorities as necessary to prevent violence or protect public infrastructure. But the extraordinary disruption to transport and movement also raises a legitimate question: did the response remain proportionate to the threat, or did it impose a collective penalty on protesters and ordinary residents alike?
The Supreme Court itself reportedly expressed concern about the consequences for commuters travelling from Gurgaon, Greater Noida, East Delhi and South Delhi.
While hearing a petition concerning the closure of metro stations and cancellation of trains, the Court questioned the proportionality of the measures, observing that the authorities could not use a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
The criticism went beyond the treatment of demonstrators. It concerned the rights of people who had no involvement in the protests but whose livelihoods depended on public transport.
As the Court reportedly observed, security measures cannot bring an entire transport system to a standstill and leave citizens without practical means of reaching work. Not everyone owns a car or has access to private transport.
The constitutional problem, therefore, is twofold: the state must protect the right to peaceful assembly while also ensuring that its response does not unnecessarily impair the rights of the wider public.
A POLITICAL PROTEST BECOMES A GENERATIONAL MOVEMENT
The immediate political future of the agitation remains uncertain.
The CJP has reportedly announced a temporary halt to its protests following Dipke’s return home after the death of his grandmother. The INDIA bloc, meanwhile, has been preparing a longer campaign, with senior leaders led by Rahul Gandhi planning a two-month agitation leading up to Parliament’s winter session and demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation.
The Opposition’s political calculations cannot be separated from the controversy. Its leaders may have their own electoral and strategic objectives, and their claims must be examined critically. Yet, the possibility of political opportunism does not diminish the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens who choose to participate in peaceful demonstrations.
That distinction matters because the most significant development may not be the Opposition’s mobilisation but the growing participation of young people.
Across the world, mass demonstrations have often acted as catalysts for social and political change. India has witnessed the farmers’ protests, the Shaheen Bagh mobilisation and other movements driven by grievances over public policy, education and accountability.
The recent agitation also coincided with Gandhi Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, whose legacy remains inseparable from the idea that peaceful resistance can challenge entrenched power without abandoning democratic principles.
Gandhi’s philosophy did not imply that every protest was justified or that every political cause was legitimate. It rested on the proposition that the moral strength of dissent lies in its willingness to confront authority without surrendering to violence.
The student-led protests in Delhi appear to draw on a similar impulse, although their long-term character and consequences remain uncertain.
As journalist Vidya Krishnan wrote in Al Jazeera, India’s emerging protest culture should neither be romanticised nor confined to a rigid category. It is something unfinished.
That observation may prove more significant than any immediate political demand. A movement can begin around a specific grievance and develop into a broader expression of generational frustration. Whether this one does so will depend on its organisation, its demands, the response of the authorities and its ability to sustain public confidence.
THE PRICE OF RESTRICTING DISSENT
India’s constitutional framework does not recognise an unrestricted right to protest at any place and at any time. Unlike an absolute conception of free expression, the Constitution permits restrictions on specified grounds, including public order and the sovereignty and integrity of the country.
But the existence of restrictions does not resolve the question of their proper application.
A prohibitory order must have a lawful basis, serve a legitimate purpose and be implemented in accordance with constitutional and statutory requirements. Its necessity and scope matter, as do the availability of less restrictive alternatives. The authorities must also respect applicable requirements concerning the communication, duration and review of restrictions.
Similarly, police dispersal of an assembly cannot become an opportunity to punish its participants. The use of force must be lawful and proportionate, and the circumstances must justify the level of intervention.
Questions about warnings, opportunities to disperse and the use of force must be assessed against the relevant law, operational circumstances and evidence. A blanket conclusion about every police action would be premature, but allegations of excessive force and arbitrary detention demand serious scrutiny.
The CJP leaders have indicated that they intend to continue their campaign for the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, faces pending petitions challenging the restrictions imposed during the demonstrations.
The outcome could have implications well beyond the immediate political confrontation.
Ultimately, peaceful protest is not an embarrassment to democracy. It is one of the means by which democracy corrects itself. Governments may disagree with demonstrators, question their motives and enforce lawful restrictions. What they cannot do is treat dissent itself as evidence of a threat to the state.
The line between public safety and the suppression of fundamental rights can be narrow. Its location, however, cannot be determined solely by the convenience of those in power.
The decisive question is whether the measures taken in Delhi were genuinely necessary to protect public order or whether the scale of the crackdown exceeded what the circumstances required.
How the Supreme Court addresses the pending challenges will help determine not only the legality of the measures adopted in the capital, but also the practical meaning of the right to peaceful dissent in contemporary India.
—The writer is former Senior Managing Editor, India Legal magazine
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