Left parties condemn Jantar Mantar denotification, police action against protesters and journalists

NEW DELHI: The Left party on Monday condemned the government’s decision to denotify Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site and the detention of protesters, including media persons covering the demonstrations against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah, seeking instructions to the Delhi Police to stop the “harassment, arbitrary detention and obstruction” of journalists.

The CPI (Marxist–Leninist)-Liberation also demanded the immediate withdrawal of the “anti-democratic order” denotifying Jantar Mantar and an end to the criminalisation and suppression of peaceful protest.

In his letter to Shah, CPI leader in the Rajya Sabha P Sandosh Kumar said that Press Information Bureau (PIB) accreditation could not be treated as a prerequisite for journalism or as a licence to report from public spaces. “Such arbitrary restrictions undermine press freedom and the public’s right to information, which is integral to democratic accountability. The Supreme Court’s intervention on this issue yesterday and concerns raised at the United Nations further underscore the urgency of ending these practices,” his letter read.

Delhi Police were recently criticised for insisting that only journalists accredited by the PIB could cover the protests.

“Such high-handedness has no place in a democracy. By obstructing independent reporting, the authorities only reinforce the public perception that the government is attempting to conceal police excesses against peaceful protesters,” said Kumar.

Referring to the government’s decision to designate three sites—Ramlila Maidan in Central Delhi, CBD Ground in East Delhi and Burari Ground in North Delhi—as alternatives to Jantar Mantar for protests, the CPI (ML)-Liberation said that the assault on the people, their democratic aspirations and struggles would not succeed. It added that allocating remote sites and imposing successive restrictions had systematically pushed democratic protests away from Parliament.

“Having turned Delhi into a militarised fortress and unleashed colonial-style police repression against students, youth, activists and citizens demanding the resignation of Kumar and the scrapping of the unconstitutional and arbitrary Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process that has disenfranchised crores of citizens, the Modi-Shah regime has now moved to shut down one of the last remaining popular spaces for democratic protest in the national capital,” the CPI (ML)-Liberation said in a statement.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) also strongly condemned the “repression” unleashed on protesters in Delhi and other places. The measures taken by the Delhi Police under the direction of the Home Ministry were the most brutal in recent times, it said.

“The fundamental right to protest has been snatched by this government, once again revealing its authoritarian character. This is a violation of Article 19 of the Constitution. The right to assemble peacefully, express dissent and petition public authorities has become a crime under the BJP dispensation controlled by the RSS,” read the statement issued by the party after a meeting of the committee held in Delhi.

The party further claimed that various student leaders had been brutally attacked and that the police had also tried to forcefully enter the premises of its office, Harkishan Singh Surjeet Bhawan, which was the venue of the meeting. “True to its fascistic character, the BJP-RSS has deployed its foot soldiers, both in khaki uniforms and in civilian clothes, to attack and intimidate protesters. Visuals have also emerged of the sexual harassment of female protesters,” the statement read.

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