Police states

 CONTEXT:

Bihar and Uttarakhand’s surveillance project comes with a free counselling session. If police founds that a person has crossed the line during street protests and demonstration and he/she will be advised to do better. If they persist in speaking out, the police records will categorise them as “anti-national”.

 

ABOUT:

1. In the race to the bottom of overzealous policing, Bihar and Uttarakhand appear to have taken a giant, blundering stride.
2. The Bihar police has threatened that the might of the “police verification report” will be used against those indulging in “criminal activity” during street protests and demonstrations — to deny them a passport or government jobs or bank loans or financial grants.
3. In other words, those who participate in protest demonstrations or disrupt traffic and are named in a chargesheet may find it difficult to get passports, government jobs, financial grants, bank loans or government contracts.
4. The Uttarakhand police has gone further and declared its intent of monitoring social media for “anti-national” posts.
5. Both proposals expose the lawkeepers’ wilful misinterpretation of the law they are meant to uphold. 

 

AGAINST LAW:

1. Passports Act, 1967 does not empowers the police to intimidate protestors with “such grave consequences”; on the contrary, several court rulings have held that a passport application or a passport renewal application cannot be denied even on the grounds of existing criminal cases.
2. Under no provisions of the IPC can the police use an imprecise term such as “anti-national” to profile and harass a citizen for her views and expressions on social media.
3. In this recent instance, Bihar police has abused its power to encroach on the personal liberties of citizens.
4. Last month, it also passed an order that if someone criticizes government online than that would be designated as cyber-crime.

 

CONCLUSION:

1. The right to protest is inalienable to a democracy and its citizens. But, increasingly, the Indian political class appears to barricade itself behind political authority to deflect questions.
2. It appears to see the protestor on the street or the critical voice on the internet as an adversary and not a legitimate participant in the process of democracy.
3. This is the kind of politics that, ultimately, licenses the public shaming of anti-CAA protestors in UP or the multiple barricaded with spiked roads on the national capital’s borders.
4. Allowing the police to vet citizens based on their participation in protests or online behaviour is a dangerous, slippery slope. Before other states clone this spectacularly undemocratic idea, it must be binned.