When politicians hold our cities to ransom
The Karnataka High Court has once again come to the rescue of Bengalureans by putting a stop to protests and processions on city roads. It has rightly restricted such activity to Freedom Park, the venue designated for demonstrations. For two days in the past week, the Congress padayatra demanding implementation of the Mekedatu reservoir project held the city to ransom, gridlocking the roads and leaving citizens in distress. That the court had to take up the issue and pass strictures is a comment on the insensitivity of the party to people’s hardship. This propensity to make political statements at the cost of the common man is not limited to any one party, and neither is it the first time that the HC has had to intervene to bring order to Bengaluru’s roads in the aftermath of a rally. As far back as 2008, a JD(S) rally had paralysed the city, prompting the judiciary to propose guidelines for traffic management. Unfazed, the party repeated its feat, leading to possibly the worst gridlocks the city had seen, with schoolchildren stranded on roads till late evening. The recent tragic death of a child after an ambulance was stuck in a traffic snarl in New Delhi should serve as a warning—the cause was again a political roadshow.
At a time when the collective mindspace is occupied by students stranded in war-hit Ukraine, and more recently, the hijab row, the Mekedatu rally will not find much resonance with the public. The Congress appears to have miscalculated and certainly does not have its finger on the people’s pulse. If anything, the padayatra appears jinxed: it had run afoul of the HC for blatant violation of Covid-19 norms in January, and this time for causing inconvenience to the public. The court is only completing the task it took up a year ago when it suo motu initiated a PIL petition on huge traffic jams caused due to frequent protests on public roads. The Calcutta and Rajasthan HCs have made similar observations and imposed
restrictions on political rallies, which only shows that our elected representatives need the courts to prevent them from acting in an irresponsible manner.