CCTV installation to manjha: How Section 144 has been imposed in Delhi

From orders prohibiting gathering or the assembly of four or more people in an area to restricting internet, Section 144 empowers executive magistrates to impose restrictions on public movement.

The study found that 25.6% of all the orders studied were CCTV installation orders issued by the Additional Commissioner of Police.

Significantly, the study also found that only 1.5%, that is 81 of the 5,400 orders, impose a blanket restriction on unlawful assembly. “In fact, in 5 out of 18 districts/ units/subdivisions, orders restricting the right to public assembly were not issued at all,” the study noted.

In contrast, 302 orders were issued to prohibit the flying of hot air balloons, UAVs, UASs, et al, followed by 157 orders to prohibit pan shops near educational institutes, and 179 orders to prohibit “use of “special” or “metallic” manjhas to fly kites”.

As many as 43% of the orders analysed in the study relate to regulating businesses through record and registration requirements.

“The common thread in these orders is an assumption that all the services in question — renting a room, taking a temporary job, sending a parcel, using a cyber cafe, buying a SIM card, dealing in second-hand goods — carry a grave risk to the maintenance of law and order and are used often enough by criminal elements to justify the pre-emptive invocation of extraordinary powers under Section 144, CrPC,” the report stated.

Section 144 CrPC empowers a district magistrate, sub-divisional magistrate or any other executive magistrate, empowered by the state government, to issue a written order “stating the material facts of the case” to direct “any person to abstain from a certain act or to take certain order with respect to certain property in his possession or under his management, if such Magistrate considers that such direction is likely to prevent, or tends to prevent, obstruction, annoyance or injury to any person lawfully employed, or danger to human life, health or safety, or a disturbance of the public tranquility, or a riot, of an affray.”

The orders expire at the end of two months from its date of issue, if not extended.

The study also found that almost every order examined had been reissued at the expiry of the two-month time limit by the authority concerned. The authors point to a “wholesale violation of the time limits inherent to Section 144 despite the repeated affirmation of their importance by constitutional courts”.