The Hindu : Front Page : Apex court stays Tamil Nadu bandh

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Monday, Oct 01, 2007
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Apex court stays Tamil Nadu bandh

J. Venkatesan

Says parties have no right to call or enforce a bandh that causes inconvenience to people

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Sunday restrained the DMK and its allies from going ahead with a bandh in Tamil Nadu on October 1 or on any other date. It held that political parties have no right to call or enforce a bandh which interferes with the fundamental freedom of citizens and caused inconvenience to them.

A Bench, comprising Justices B.N. Agrawal and P.P. Naolekar, in a rare instance of a sitting on a holiday, passed the order on a special leave petition filed by the AIADMK challenging the Madras High Court order declining to interfere with the bandh.

The Bench, after a three-hour hearing, accepted the submissions of AIADMK counsel Guru Krishna Kumar, Subramonium Prasad and N. Jothi that the bandh call was illegal.

The court rejected the arguments of senior counsel Altaf Ahmed for the State and A.K. Ganguly for the DMK that what was contemplated in the September 24 resolution passed by political parties was only a hartal or strike and not a bandh.

The Bench said, “so long as the 1998 judgment of this court remains, you cannot call for a bandh, which has been completely prohibited. Your object is to stop everything to show your might and solidarity. We cannot tolerate this. Public right is superior to individual party rights.”

Pointing out that the Madras High Court had come to a prima facie finding that the call given by the political parties was only for a bandh, the Bench said: “We are also prima facie of the view that the call given by the political parties [respondents 3 to 7 — the DMK, the Congress, the CPI (M), the CPI and the PMK] is only for a bandh and not for a hartal or strike.”

The Bench, by an order of injunction, restrained the respondents from proceeding with the call for a bandh on October 1 or on any other date in terms of the September 24 resolution.

The Bench told Mr. Ahmed (who also appeared for the Chief Secretary and the Director-General of Police), “whatever the political parties had called for, you have permitted them to go ahead by issuing certain directions on September 27. By doing so, you [the State] have failed in your constitutional duty to protect the rights of citizens. If it comes within the realm of a bandh, it has to be stopped. There is a breakdown of the constitutional machinery if you [State] don’t do that to stop the bandh.”

Quoting its 1998 judgment, it said, “There cannot be any doubt that the fundamental rights of the people as a whole cannot be subservient to the claim of fundamental right of an individual or only a section of the people.”

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