Dozens of activists were detained by the police on Monday as they attempted to organise a rally towards the Vidhana Soudha against the ban on demonstrations outside Freedom Park.
Members of Horatada Hakkigagi Janandolana, a coalition of progressive organisations, gathered at the Gandhi Statue at Maurya Circle demanding the repeal of the "Licensing and Regulation of Protests, Demonstrations, and Protest Marches (Bengaluru City) Order, 2021".
They also called for the home minister or the police commissioner to visit the protest site and address their grievances. Instead, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Shekhar HT arrived to receive their memorandum, prompting the protestors to attempt a march towards the Vidhana Soudha. The police subsequently detained and transported them in buses.
During the ensuing commotion, police manhandled and abused this reporter, mistaking him for a protester, despite repeated assertions that he is from the press.
DCP Shekhar later said: "The protesters sought to take out a march to the Vidhana Soudha, but we detained them since it was not permissible.”
He later told DH that 80 protesters were detained and were later released. He also said the activists’ memorandum will be passed on to the commissioner.
Back in the days
During the demonstration, Dalit Sangharsh Samithi leader Mavalli Shankar recalled the days when protests were freely allowed.
"In the 1980s, protests were held at the Gopala Gowda Circle from where people's problems directly reached the Vidhana Soudha. Later, the protest spot was shifted to Banappa Park, Maurya Circle, and Mysore Bank Circle, and has now been confined to only Freedom Park," he rued.
Clifton Rozario, CPI(ML) Liberation’s central committee member, attributed the protest ban to what he called the RSS’ and the Sangh Parivar’s "anti-protest mentality". "The BJP government has suppressed dissent since it came to power at the centre in 2014," he said, adding that the present dispensation is duty-bound to live up to people’s expectations.
Shivarame Gowda of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike criticised the confinement of protests to Freedom Park, a former prison, stating that it should be reserved for criminals rather than activists exercising their democratic right to protest.
CPI(M) leader GN Nagaraj noted that restrictions on democratic protests had increased after the era of globalisation and the desecration of the Babri Masjid.