The Kerala High Court on Wednesday said that it could not put restrictions on the practice of issuing calls for hartals as giving hartal calls was not a crime. A full bench of the court also said that the media could not be barred from publishing reports on hartal calls and associated matters. “Declaring hartals is not a crime. A stringent law is needed to deal with it,” the court said.
The full bench of the court comprising acting Chief Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justices AM Shafique and AK Jayasankar Nambiar said that the Government could consider formulating a comprehensive law to prevent incidents of violence and destruction of public property in connection with hartals.
Considering a batch of petitions seeking a ban on hartal calls and order to control the media from publishing reports concerning hartals, the High Court bench said that the political parties and other organisers could not be legally barred from issuing calls for hartals in connection with general or particular purposes.
The Government had the responsibility to ensure protection of life and property of the people and therefore it was up to it to put controls on the observance of hartals, the bench said. Only a law, and not the court, could effectively deal with the incidents of violence taking place during hartals, the court pointed out.
The court said it was instructing the Government to formulate a comprehensive law for identifying those responsible for hartal calls and violence during observance of hartals and to take effective action. A draft Bill was prepared for this in 2008, but nobody had been prepared to abide by the clauses in it, the bench pointed out.
Stating that the media could not be barred from publishing reports on hartal calls and associated matters, the judges observed that freedom of expression was not exclusive to citizens but the media also had it. Freedom of the Press was one of the Constitutional values of the democratic country, they added.