New Delhi: Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has said the space for democratic dissent is shrinking in India. He said students, activists and ordinary citizens are increasingly being criminalised for exercising their fundamental rights to protest and express their views, Live Law reported.Speaking at the 5th Justice G.P. Singh Memorial Lecture at the National Law Institute University (NLIU), Bhopal, Justice Bhuyan said peaceful debate and dissent are the essence of democracy but are increasingly being met with arrests, prolonged incarceration and restrictive bail conditions.“For putting a post on Facebook commenting on the conduct of a minister who had called a serving Indian Army officer a daughter of a terrorist, an FIR is lodged, and he has to seek anticipatory bail. Bail is granted but what does the Court do? [Asking them to] deposit your passport [when] he is not even on a flight risk. [Then it says] don’t post anything on Facebook,” he said as per Live Law.He questioned instances where students protesting on campuses were denied bail for extended periods and criticised courts for imposing bail conditions that curtailed freedom of expression. Referring to the case of youngsters who gathered on a boat in the Ganga for Iftar, he said, “There is no law prohibiting consumption of chicken over the Ganga river; they were arrested for that very reason and they had to remain in jail for three months. Can people be arrested and denied bail for 3 months for such an activity, I ask myself! Citizens are watching, people are watching.”The judge further criticised the refusal of permission for a pro-Palestine demonstration in Mumbai, saying universities should remain spaces that encourage critical thinking and debate rather than penalising student activism.“India has recognised Palestine; we have a Palestinian Embassy in India. Traditionally, India has always recognised Palestine … [Yet] it is South Africa that moved the International Court of Justice against what is happening there, asking it to make a declaration that it is genocide. The UN appointed Justice Muralidhar, former judge of the Orissa High Court, to go into the violence in Gaza. He has published a report, which is accepted by the UN and is now in the public domain, about the violence meted out by the state on such children, women and elderly,” Justice Bhuyan told the audience.On Gaza, he said he found it “very amusing” that a judge had questioned why people wished to protest over events outside India, Bar and Bench reported.Addressing the principle of separation of powers, Justice Bhuyan cautioned against retired judges entering politics immediately after leaving office, arguing that such moves blur the constitutional distinction between the judiciary and the executive. He also defended the Supreme Court’s landmark Kesavananda Bharati judgment, describing it as a decision that has stood the test of time, while criticising public remarks questioning its jurisprudential legitimacy.“If we have two legs at one place, the stool will fall apart. This is the fundamental principle. Therefore, when a former Chief Justice of India says he is going to the Rajya Sabha to bridge the gap between the judiciary and the executive, it is fundamentally wrong… It goes against the principles of separation of powers,” he said, Bar and Bench reports.