All of them should go to jail; Delhi HC on protesters who stalled metro services

The Delhi High Court on Thursday suggested penal action against protestors who stalled metro rail services or dumped garbage on the roads and cause public inconvenience.

“All of them should go to jail,” a bench of acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said citing such protests.

The observation by the bench came as it issued a notice to the Centre, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF) and the police to seek their stand on a PIL demanding action against those responsible for the alleged stalling of metro services in the city on May 31.

The metro services were hit for a few hours causing inconvenience to the passengers on Delhi Metro’s Blue Line, following a tussle between CISF staff and DMRC staff over a parking issue at the Dwarka Sector 21 metro station in southwest Delhi.

As per a petition, a tussle happened around 12:30 pm on May 31 after both DMRC and CISF staffs got into an altercation when a tire of a vehicle, that apparently belonged to the latter, was deflated as it was parked in a no-parking zone outside the premises of the metro station.

The plea claimed that since the vehicle was parked illegally, the station manager “had ordered to deflate the tire”.

The petition by one Puran Chand Arya was clubbed by the anourt with a another PIL over the May 24 agitation by New Delhi Municipal Council’s contractual sanitation workers who had dumped garbage outside prominent government buildings like the Shastri Bhavan and the Rail Bhavan in Lutyen’s Delhi, demanding regularisation of jobs and better wages.

The bench directed that both matters should be heard together.

(with inputs from agencies)