Bengal rath yatra row: Supreme Court tells BJP to submit a revised plan

The Supreme Court on Tuesday set stiff conditions for the Bharatiya Janata Party to roll out its grand plans of a rath yatra in West Bengal. 

The SC agreed with the state that the proposed yatra passing through communally sensitive areas is a potential threat to law and order. 

A bench, comprising Justices LN Rao, SK Kaul and CJI Ranjan Gogoi, allowed BJP to submit a revised plan that addressed this concern and directed the state to expeditiously deal with it.

When senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the BJP, claimed that the case involved constitutional points, an amused CJI responded: “You want to hold a rally, what is the constitutional point in it? Left to myself, had I been in a high court, I would have never entertained such a petition.”

Rohatgi said that political parties cannot be stopped from holding a rally. He referred to a January 14 communication received from the state declining permission to hold a rath yatra. However, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the West Bengal government said that the state had a duty to preserve law and order. 

Proving A Point

BJP even brought statistics to the SC to show that in 2017 and 2018, the party was granted permission to hold 1,584 and 2,859 meetings/rallies respectively