The Supreme Court has indicated that it may ask the Central government to set up special courts to try cases of damage done to public property in agitations.
A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya on Tuesday expressed displeasure at the Centre for not coming out with suggestions to prevent damage to public property and said special courts would be directed to dispose of these cases within three months.
Justice Singhvi told counsel for the Centre that the court would also monitor the prosecution of those calling rail and road blockade as part of the measures to prevent losses running into crores of rupees. “We are indicating to you that we are going to order mandatory prosecution of such people. They must be prosecuted by special courts, and the cases must be disposed of in three months.”
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When counsel sought adjournment, Justice Singhvi told him that the Centre must devise a mechanism for ensuring better coordination among the police and other security agencies to deal with agitators who damaged railway property and government buses.
Initially, the court took up the case of attack on Dalits at Mirchpur in Haryana and later enlarged the scope of the petition, taking up the issue of damage to public property in rail and road roko agitations staged by a section of the people in Haryana.
Expressing his anguish at the spate of agitations in various parts of the country in recent years, Justice Singhvi said: “At times, even Ministers took part in such stirs as part of their political agenda.” He pointed out that in just one day, 184 buses were torched in Hyderabad during an agitation. “In a rail roko agitation in Faridabad two years ago, several trains were stopped and their windowpanes smashed with no resistance from anybody. Are you really serious in stopping all this? How many police personnel are deployed on every train to protect passengers from vandals and hooligans?”
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He said it was unfortunate that the country seemed to have an unlimited tolerance. “Since you [the government] are not doing, being the third constituent of the state we [the judiciary] will do it. But it is your function, not ours.”
Even as the Bench adjourned the hearing by three weeks to enable the Centre come out with concrete suggestions for preventing rail roko agitations and the resultant damage to railway property, Justice Mukhopadhaya made it clear that if the government did not come out with proposals, “the government would be left with no option but to implement the court order.”
At the last hearing on November 1, the Bench suggested that a Central security agency be formed for preventing or minimising damage to public property in agitations and sought the Centre's suggestions and posted the matter for further hearing on Tuesday. Since the suggestions were not forthcoming, the court adjourned the hearing by three weeks.