India International Centre, Delhi, witnessed a discussion on the use and misuse of Section 144 CrPC recently. The occasion was the launch of a report based on replies pertaining to queries about Section 144 CrPC by the State Government of Delhi under the Right to Information Act. The report revealed that in the year 2021, prohibitory orders were issued over 6,100 times in the NCT.
Former Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, who presided over the event, observed that the figures which emerge from the report are quite disturbing. He further said, “Conferring drastic powers upon the executive, or the police, through Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is not acceptable in a nation governed by the rule of law. If someone had told me earlier that Section 144 could be invoked for such mundane affairs, I would have laughed at it.”
5,400 executive orders
The report, which was published on March 26, avers that within a time period of January 1, 2021 to January 1, 2022, around 5,400 executive orders were issued in the name of urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger. One of the authors of the report admitted that nearly 600 orders were not provided to them by police officials claiming breach of “national interest.”
The prohibitory orders are classified in four broad categories, including establishing CCTV surveillance (nearly 25.6 per cent) and regulating businesses (43 pc). Interestingly, the report revealed that Section 144 was used even to regulate the sale of balms or cough syrups, which are often used as drugs.
Moreover, the report discloses that only 1.5 per cent i.e. 81 of the 5,400 orders impose a blanket restriction on unlawful assembly, which is the main objective of Section 144. In fact, in five out of 18 districts/subdivisions, orders restricting the right to public assembly were never issued. In contrast, 302 orders were issued to prohibit the flying of hot air balloons, UAVs, UASs, et al, followed by 157 orders to prohibit pan shops near educational institutes, and 179 orders to prohibit the use of ‘special’ or ‘metallic’ manjha to fly kites.
Violation of time limits
The advocate-authors of the report point to a “wholesale violation of the time limits inherent to Section 144 despite the repeated affirmation of their importance by constitutional courts” since various orders were reissued after the stipulated timeline of two months.
Who can forget that in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on the midnight of June 2011, by way of an unprecedented action, an order under Section 144 CrPC was issued, without any justification and without adequate warning. The Supreme Court had then criticised the Government for invoking Section 144 against a sleeping crowd. It had held that such a provision can be used only under grave circumstances for maintenance of public peace.
Great Jurist Roscoe Pound‘s theory of balancing of interests is indispensable as the current state of affairs demands urgent steps through a Public interest Litigation. The apex court has to gauge the dimensions of legal provisions in context of the jurisdiction of the empowered officer in exercising and passing an order under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
