Vijayawada: A vacation bench at the Andhra Pradesh High Court has suspended till January 23 the GO-1 that had imposed curbs on public meetings on national and state highways.
In an interim order in response to a PIL, the vacation bench directed the state government to file a counter affidavit and posted the next hearing on Jan. 20. The bench comprising Justice Battu Devanand and Justice V.R.K. Krupasagar heard the PIL filed on Thursday by CPI secretary K. Ramakrishna challenging the recent GO issued by the AP government.
The bench observed that the GO was against Section 30 of the Police Act, 1861. No government had brought in such a GO in the 75 years’ history of independent India, the bench observed.
It asked whether India could have organised the Freedom movement had the then British government issued orders similar to GO-1. However, the bench added that it was not going into the details presented by the Advocate-General and it would do so after the counter affidavit was filed.
Petitioner’s counsel Aswani Kumar said that, as per GO-1, no public meeting would be permitted on national and state highways and on municipality and gram panchayat roads. The government insisting on prior permission to organise meetings and rallies was against Section 30 of IPC, he said.
Counsel told the bench that even during British rule, only Section 144 was promulgated to curb rallies. He pleaded for a stay on implementation of GO-1, saying even during the Mahatma’s Non-Cooperation movement, such GOs were not issued.
Advocate-General S. Sriram raised objection to the hasty admissibility of the PIL by saying no reason was mentioned for taking up the PIL for an emergency hearing. He argued that the PIL was engineered to suit the vacation bench and said the state government was having no information about the PIL. The vacation bench should not hear the cases related to policy decisions of the state government, he said.
The A-G said that the word ‘ban or prohibition’ was not mentioned anywhere in the GO and added that the state government was acting only as per the provisions of the Police Act.
Reacting to the HC’s interim order, CPI secretary Ramakrishna urged the state government to withdraw the GO immediately. Telugu Desam chief Nara Chandrbabu Naidu tweeted that extreme fear would turn a man a psycho and hence Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Reddy promulgated the GO-1.
Meanwhile, film producer Ram Gopal Varma, in a satirical tweet, branded Naidu as a ‘psychiatrist’ doing a mind-analysis to find the reasons for the CM issuing the GO.
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