A fight for the right to protest in Bengaluru

Earlier this year, a group of retired teachers from aided schools demanding they be added to the Old Pension Scheme sat in protest at Freedom Park for 142 days with no government functionary visiting them to even receive a memorandum. In January 2022, the Bengaluru Police Commissioner issued an order restricting all protests to Freedom Park, one of the reasons being the traffic snarls the marches resulted in. Karnataka High Court’s intervention The city police said the Licensing and Regulation of Protests, Demonstrations and Protest Marches Order, 2021, followed a “direction” from the Karnataka High Court and their hands were tied. However, advocate and activist Vinay Sreenivasa pointed out that the High Court had been hearing a suo motu public interest litigation on the hardships to citizens due to protests following a letter highlighting these issues by a sitting High Court judge Justice Aravind Kumar in March 2021 and before any order was issued, the city police commissioner voluntarily issued the January 2022 order and submitted it to the court, following which the court disposed of the PIL directing the State to follow the January 2022 order in August 2022. “I have been holding protests at Mysore Bank Circle for nearly 60 years and have decided not to move to Freedom Park in protest against the 2022 order.