Bandhs

A bandh is a political protest that forces a complete shutdown of an area. Commercial activity is discouraged and transportation systems are delayed or stopped. 

A bandh is a political protest that forces a complete shutdown of an area. Commercial activity is discouraged and transportation systems are delayed or stopped. Monday’s Bharat Bandh, which the opposition was keen on making ‘a success’, was to protest inflation and recently escalated petrol prices.

Was the Bharat Bandh illegal? Yes. A 1997 Supreme Court ruling stated that ‘no political party or organisation can claim that it is entitled to paralyse industry and commerce in the entire state or nation and is entitled to prevent the citizens not in sympathy with its viewpoint from exercising their fundamental right or from performing their duties for their own benefits or for the benefit of the state or the nation…’ In 2004, the Bombay High Court fined the Shiv Sena and BJP Rs 20 lakh for organising a bandh in Mumbai to protest bomb blasts.

The court permits general strikes—which protest against a specific establishment—but not total ones. Parties thus attempt to pass off bandhs as area-wide strikes; the SC took note of this and clarified the difference between a bandh and a strike in 2009 when a general strike was called across Tamil Nadu. (This clarification came 13 days after an SC bench told a petitioner—who argued that the TN bandh call was in violation of the 1997 judgment—“What has this court to do with stopping strikes? India is a democratic state where everyone has a right to express their feelings.”)

The Bharat Bandh is estimated to have caused a GDP loss of about Rs 3,000-13,000 crore. That’s the macro bit. One photographer who captured a rail stoppage he was invited to by a protester says, “They really know how to play the media. He called me, saying there was going to be a big event. When I got there, it was just him lying on the tracks. He was taken away soon after.” Soon after the photos were taken, that is.

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Rahul Bhatia