Bombay HC restrains MVA from calling for Maharashtra Bandh

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday restrained the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners—Shiv Sena (UBT), Nationalist Congress Party (SP) and Congress—from proceeding with their call for a Maharashtra bandh on Saturday or any future date, saying a general strike would paralyse normal life.
The opposition alliance had called for a statewide bandh on August 24 in protest against the police apathy in handling the Badlapur school sexual assault case.
The high court relied on its July 2004 ruling, which held that the enforcement of bandhs was unconstitutional. A division bench of chief justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and justice Amit Borkar said that if political parties and individuals were not restrained from proceeding with the call for bandh, a “huge loss, not only in terms of economy and business, but also in terms of providing essential services and basic amenities, including health services, will occur”.
The bench passed the order on two petitions filed on Friday through advocates Subhash Jha and Gunaratna Sadavarte, seeking orders to restrain the MVA partners from proceeding with their call for a Maharashtra Bandh on Saturday. They expressed grave concern about the adverse consequences that citizens in Maharashtra and Mumbai, in particular, are likely to suffer if the general strike went ahead.
Sadavarte submitted interviews by MVA leaders in which they said that “local trains, buses and roads shall be closed” on Saturday. Advocate general Birendra Saraf informed the court that the call for a general strike was illegal, and the state government would take all steps to ensure there was no damage or destruction of human lives or property.
Although the bench refused to get into political issues raised by the petitioners, it found substance in their apprehension that normal life was likely to be paralysed in a bandh.
“We are, prima facie, convinced that the call given by the political parties to observe [a] bandh tomorrow in the entire state of Maharashtra, which means call for [the] cessation of all kinds of activities, will result in the life of the state coming to [a] halt,” the bench said. The bandh “may entail heavy loss to the industrial activities, business activities, economic activities and other such activities,” it added.
Such a call, the judges said, was likely to affect the education sector, emergency services, local train services in Mumbai, and other public conveniences like the supply of electricity and water. “Local trains in Mumbai are its lifeline and, in case the call of Bandh is permitted to be observed, it is likely that the entire life of Mumbai may come to a halt,” the judges added.
The court also ordered the state authorities to take prompt measures to deal with the call for a bandh.