Citizens need to fight for rights?
One thought that Fundamental Rights were guaranteed to all citizens of India, including Goa. They can be subject to ‘reasonable restrictions’, but this can only be done by due process as provided in law. Otherwise, Fundamental Rights are absolute.
Or are they?
Article 19 of the Constitution of India provides that: “All citizens shall have the right:
(a) to freedom of speech and expression, (b) to assemble peaceably and without arms , (c) to form associations or unions
But, it seems, the Goa Police and government are unaware of this. On Independence Day, one Anthony D’Silva, who describes himself as a ‘social activist’, was prevented from delivering a meaningful message about the plastic menace near the District Collectorate at Margao.
D’Silva was peacefully sitting, all alone, near the Collectorate with placards bearing quaint rhyming messages in Konkani and English that he intended for Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and PWD Minister Churchill Alemao to read. He was not armed. Being only a single person, he wasn’t even creating an unlawful assembly.
He wasn’t even protesting, even though he had the right to do that. He was not blocking traffic in any way and he certainly wasn’t creating any nuisance. Yet, police came and threatened to take action against him if he did not immediately move out from the spot.
When he informed the Police that he was within his rights to do what he was doing, they picked him up and took him to the Police Station. There, he was detained till the entire flag hoisting function was over. Apart from the fact that the CM and the PWD Minister missed seeing D’Silva’s placards on the plastic menace, he also missed joining the Independence Day flag hoisting function.
Were the placards in any way objectionable? Was his action in any way in violation of the law? Was there any reason for the police to detain D’Silva at the police station? What D’Silva is most cut up about is that by detaining him at the Police Station, the cops violated his right to participate in the unfurling of the National Flag at the Independence Day function.
What use are Fundamental Rights if the Police do not respect them? Under no circumstances should the Police be allowed to ride roughshod like this. Are we living in a dictatorship?
Flak for thought
Just a day after Chief Minister Digambar Kamat triumphantly announced setting up of a Golden Jubilee Development Council headed by renowned scientist Dr Raghunath Mashelkar to create Goa Vision 2035, a document laying down a road map for 25 years ahead for the state, he has got a rude shock.
A prominent member of the Council – playwright, actor and Jnanpith Award winner Girish Karnad, who was included in the Council for his work in the Arts – has withdrawn in protest against the government’s silence and inaction against the Hindu JanJagriti Samiti’s closing down an exhibition of paintings by Sanskrit scholar and Indologist Dr Jose Pereira.
“I am horrified that private vigilante groups should be permitted to take the law into their hands while the state stands mute and the police express inability to protect the exhibition of his work,” Karnad has said in a letter to the Chief Minister. The letter slams the government’s pampering of fundamentalist Hindu organisations.
Kamat believes one man sitting with placards at an Independence Day function is a threat, but hesitates to say that a sinister Hindu fundamentalist fundamentalist organisation whose members have been charged with exploding deadly bombs both in Thane and Margao is a terrorist outfit.
Goa may be ruled by the Congress, but does it really have a secular government?
