Approach Delhi Police: HC on PIL seeking removal of blockade at Singhu border

PTI, Sep 30, 2024, 3:47 PM IST

The Delhi High Court on Monday refused to entertain a PIL that had demanded the removal of the blockade at the Singhu border and asked the petitioners to approach the city police with their grievance by filing a representation.

The counsel for the petitioners said although there are no protesting farmers at the Delhi-Haryana border, the Singhu border is still barricaded, which is causing inconvenience to the public.

A bench of Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said the issue has to be looked into by the authorities concerned and not the court.

Directing the petitioners to first file a representation with the Delhi Police, the bench said the same shall be decided expeditiously.

In the petition, the three petitioners,“ who said they are public-spirited persons, submitted that there has been an extensive blockade at the Singhu Border on National Highway-44 for more than seven months, which is causing heavy traffic in the area and inconveniencing the public.

Asserting the right to move freely under the Constitution, the petition said many people from Haryana go to Delhi for their treatment but are now facing problems.

“The respondents (the Delhi government and the Centre) have blocked the highway road at the Singhu border, which connects Haryana with Delhi, by putting extensive roadblocks and barricading on the highway road and that too without providing or facilitating any alternative route for safe and smooth passage, that due to all of these, the people who are travelling from Delhi to Haryana or from Haryana to Delhi have to take ancillary and capillary roads, which are going through nearby villages,” the public interest litigation (PIL) matter said.

“Even after more than seven months, even when not a single farmer is protesting at the Singhu border, the respondents have blocked the road at the Singhu border, leading to massive traffic Jams, which in turn is causing great inconvenience to the public at large,” it added.