Creating history to leading change, spot that saw it all

A vantage point from where the masses spoke truth to power

October 11, 2017 01:47 am | Updated 01:47 am IST - New Delhi

Bhiwani: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal attends the cremation ceremony of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal at his village Bamla in Bhiwani, Haryana on Thursday. Grewal allegedly committed suicide over OROP issue. PTI Photo (PTI11_3_2016_000213B)

Bhiwani: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal attends the cremation ceremony of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal at his village Bamla in Bhiwani, Haryana on Thursday. Grewal allegedly committed suicide over OROP issue. PTI Photo (PTI11_3_2016_000213B)

There is always a story to tell from Jantar Mantar. In the nearly 25 years since it replaced the Boat Club as the Capital’s designated protest spot, the seemingly average-looking Lutyens' Delhi street, running adjacent an ancient astronomical observatory commissioned by Rajput King Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II of Jaipur in the 18th century, has proved, time and again, that it is more than just that.

From student-police confrontations triggered in the wake of Mandal Commission recommendations to the relatively recent, and peaceful, One Rank One Pension (OROP) protest by defence veterans, Jantar Mantar has been the vantage point from where the masses have spoken their respective truth(s) to successive governments.

Special Status

Anna Hazare’s protest also started at Jantar Mantar and later led to the creation of the Aam Aadmi Party. More recently, the site had seen the descent of innumerable sugar cane farmers demanding higher prices for their produce in 2009 and the call to arms by Jats seeking reservations.

After Mahendra Singh Tikait, leader of Jat farmers from Uttar Pradesh, led lakhs of protesters to the besiege the Boat Club in the late 1980s, the venue for designated protests was shifted to Jantar Mantar in 1993, bringing it close to the top of a list of a dozen “sensitive” locations in the Capital.

It has a designated team of the local police tasked exclusively with sending multiple reports related to the goings-on at the spot. It also has unhindered access to the highest echelons of both the Delhi Police and the Intelligence establishment on a daily basis. It also has a separate protocol for barricading patterns.

Multiple teams

“Multiple teams within the Intelligence establishment, in charge of subjects varying from labour issues to political movements among many other classifications, are in direct touch with this particular police team. There is also an exclusive reserve for the maintenance of law and order as and when the need for it arises,” said a police source.

“While the Parliament, the Delhi Assembly and the Delhi Secretariat are sensitive locations, no other open location, per se, is deemed as sensitive as Jantar Mantar,” the source added. Other sensitive locations include universities and government installations.

Before candle-light vigils and marches became what some of them termed as the “standard operating procedure” for dissenting voices over a range of issues emerging with time, Jantar Mantar, according to senior law enforcement officials, will always be remembered for sustaining the delicate balance between the “culture of mobilisation” and lone “sit-in protests” in the Capital.

“Although there was an attempt to change things in 2010, Jantar Mantar has, since 1993, provided perhaps the only spot in the country for protesters not only to voice dissent for a specified period but to camp and basically live on-site,” the official claimed.

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