Chandigarh
27 July 2021
DIVYA AZAD
How can police lock people up in their own homes? What if there was a medical emergency, who would be responsible? Why should residents have to show IDs to enter their own homes? Do the actions of Mayor Ravi Kant Sharma amount to ‘wrongful confinement’ under section 340 of the IPC? Haven’t the law abiding citizens of Chandigarh suffered enough after almost 18 months of voluntarily staying confined within their homes? Are we living in dictator-raj?These are some of the glaringly serious questions that Chandigarh Mayor Ravi Kant and other BJP leaders need to answer for their outrageous action of locking the gates of Sector 48 societies ̶ for more than two-and-a-half-hours ̶ in the evening, on Monday 26th July 2021. Why residents were not allowed to go out simply because BJP Mayor Ravi Kant was inaugurating a water supply line in Sector 48.
It was reported that even residents of Universal Society ̶ living as far as 300 metres away from the inauguration venue ̶ were barred from leaving their society.“AAP condemns the brazen and shameful actions of BJP inconveniencing the common citizens of Chandigarh Sector 48 Societies,” Mr Chander Mukhi Sharma, Aam Aadmi Party’s Election in-charge for Municipal Corporation Chandigarh said. “It is ironic that on the one hand, BJP is inaugurating civil works supposedly for the benefit of the common people, but at the same time, they are curtailing the same civil society’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement.”
Any restriction on an individual’s freedom of movement under Article 19(1)(d) of the Constitution of India, has to be reasonable in nature, and that is clearly not the case here.Don’t the local police have more pressing law enforcement tasks to attend to, than wasting their time, energy and resources barricading long stretches of public roads and inconveniencing commuters?“A Mayor is supposed to be the first citizen of a city. But this is the first time we are hearing of a Mayor who is afraid of his own citizens,” Mr Sharma added. “ the BJP leaders are creating hurdles for their own local residents.”
