The designated protest site must be “a wide open space, with proper amenities”, but also bounded so as not to inconvenience citizens, said the constitutional court, casually. It should also be “in proximity to centres of power, so that the people asking to be heard are at least visible to those in power,” implore the protesters.There is much to be said about the political and legal ethics of relegating dissent to physically bounded, inconvenient sites, but for the moment, Bharat Mandapam would serve both purposes well (it is central and it is bounded), at least on days when it is free from foreign summits and trade expositions.But evidently, Delhi Police forgot all about its existence when it was drawing up a list of bounded spaces with proper parking. The government would probably have considered it a blasphemous idea. For all the rhetoric about the ‘foreign hand’, the protesting citizen is never at par with the visiting foreign dignitary, who comes bearing promises and proposals.Even though protesters ask for periodic accountability from the government, their act of physical assemblage is oddly not seen as serving any public purpose within the Indian democracy. The government, in fact, spends a lot of time trying to convince its voters that asking for accountability is only a step towards destabilisation, anarchy and violence.Of the many ways that it finds to delegitimise protests, a simple method is to relegate all protest speech and action to spatial, but more important, to psychological margins.Hence nobody thinks of Bharat Mandapam, or the NDMC Convention Centre (on Parliament Street) as obvious sites to designate for protests. Protesters must always be on the outside, in relation to centres of power. It only follows that the Standing Order of October 11, 2026, that de-notified Jantar Mantar as the accepted site for protests, declares the Ramlila Maidan, available on payment of hefty fees, and two other sites in Narela and Burari on the outskirts of the city as the new designated protest sites.It is also in keeping with the string of evictions of low-income colonies and elite clubs and old mosques from Lutyens’ Delhi, which seems to be becoming a ‘by invitation only’ zone. In the interest of public order and security.To delegitimise a protest in a concerted way is to strip it of its history, to distract from the questions that it is asking. The effects of such delegitimastion are everywhere to see.Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav Global Sammelan, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, October 23, 2026. Photo: Directorate of Public Relations PMO via PTI.§An RAF commandant offered me mineral water on a humid protest afternoon, which made me more kindly-disposed towards the force present. I asked two women police constables about their duty hours. “Don’t ask”, they said. “It is terrible. We work 12 hours or more, then take the bus home, which takes another hour and a half, and then there is housework waiting.”It isn’t just the police that are being subjected to excessively long work days, causing much mental and physical stress. Young lawyers spend their days in court and then volunteer their time at night, rushing across Delhi to intervene at police stations on behalf of detenus. Medical volunteers keep similarly long hours.Also read: Cockroaches, Deplorables and Bigots: Elites’ Contempt Signals Crisis of Legitimacy in Oligarchical OrderThe unnecessarily detained citizens – students, teachers, business people and professionals – lose so many productive hours, even if they are not brutalised, but put away for an entire day for the sin of being present at a protest. Then there is the material loss – the innumerable electronic devices that are seized and then disappeared, for example.If there were to be a financial audit, the police’s far-fetched pre-emptive actions on behalf of the government would prove to have caused massive losses to the GDP.But for the moment, the courts have chosen not to test the legality of the serious restrictions put on the daily lives of protesting citizens, and instead given credence to the police’s apprehensions. So everyone blames the protesters for being out on the ‘de-notified’ streets, wanting to be heard by the government.It is implicit that after having elected a government, there is really no need to question it – not beyond the digital realm, at any rate. The digital realm invites internet suspensions and bots and trolls and opinions citing the “foreign hand” and “descent into anarchy” from a wide variety of government supporters.There are even foreign nationals of Indian origin condemning the protests, little realising that as per the very narrow rules now set up dictating who may speak, had they written a similar letter supporting the right to question the government, they themselves would have been considered irrefutable proof of the “foreign hand”, and lost their OCIs.So how is it that the state escapes all scrutiny and the protesters carry the entire burden of causing inconvenience? Article 19(3) of the Constitution of India allows restrictions on peaceful assemblies only if they disrupt public order, which is a higher threshold than the amorphous “law and order and inconvenience” issues cited by the police.Delhi Police detains a demonstrator demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 17, 2026. Photo: PTI /Ravi Choudhary.Yet the courts have recognised “inconvenience” as a good ground to regulate protests. They seek to “balance conveniences” or balance the fundamental right to peaceful assembly with the right not to be stuck in a traffic jam, for instance. It is also noteworthy that the inconvenience threshold is only ever invoked in the context of protests, never when the sole source of heavy-duty inconveniences is the government itself.The courts have further created a category of the neutral, innocent citizen, and positioned her against the protesting citizen. The courts are willing to protect the rights of the innocent citizen, but not offer the same protection to the protesting citizen, without first making her answerable to the state’s unclear apprehensions, and before questioning the validity of the protest, reviewing details of participants and alleged funding, etc.On October 9, when petitioners challenged mass detentions, suspension of metro services and curfewed streets as a response to the protests, the court neatly picked out suspension of metro services as the only claim worthy of a preliminary response, because it affected the “general public”.Very categorically, the court stepped in to protect the ‘neutral’ citizen’s rights, those who might be going to work or to the hospital and whose mobility was being unfairly restricted. When counsel pointed out that protesters were equally citizens and that there may be those who wished to participate but could not do so because of the suspension of trains or metro services or because they were illegally detained, the courts refused to speak for the protester, until the “protest organisers” came before them as a party.Also read: The Two-Part Eligibility Test for Being a Protester in IndiaThe courts are willing to entertain the amorphous category of the citizen, but the protesting citizen must distinguish herself more clearly and state her clear purpose first. The protesting citizen is the bad citizen, who will first sign personal bonds, who will explain herself, before her rights are adjudicated. The good citizen will be protected from the protester’s tantrums.Such categorisation by the law, as also the relegation of protest actions to the margins, also obstructs political mobilisation around a dissenting idea, an imperative for any lawful regime change.It is not surprising, then, that traders in Delhi who have incurred loss of business due to consumers’ reduced mobility on account of the police imposing prohibitory orders, restricting public transport and excessively barricading the city are blaming protesters rather than demanding unrestricted movement for all citizens. They do not find it worthwhile to challenge the administration’s opaque actions and restrictions.Some zealous market committees have even come out in “counter-protest”, waving their fists at the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) protesters, cursing them for inconveniencing people and shouting out their support for the SIR and the government – an agenda apparently far removed from ensuring smooth business activity, but yet.The police for their part only need to look confident and cite the vaguest intelligence reports and likelihood of violence. Then there is the trump card of “terrorist conspiracy”, an omnibus allegation that can encompass all manner of political organising work. It cannot be sufficiently overstated that “apprehensions of violence” are invariably linked to peaceful actions that oppose the government.Since such apprehensions are beyond reproach, and consequently since excessive restrictions cannot be questioned, it is usually the ‘unyielding protester’ who is placed in opposition to the traders, or to those complaining of traffic problems. Why are they so stubborn? In the event, there is no public discussion of the protesters’ concerns.The courts speak of “balancing rights and conveniences”, and yet, missing from the equation is the reason for the protests: the SIR and the consequential fear, inconvenience and disenfranchisement that it has caused. If it is to be a fair balancing of conveniences, then the wage-days lost in following up with BLOs and EROs (Booth Level Officers and Electoral Registration Officers), the money spent on getting documents made, the illegal deletions and the interminable hearings, the elections apparently lost to malpractices; then for those school teachers and Anganwadi workers doubling up as BLOs, the school hours lost, the excessive pressure on BLOs in breach of all labour laws should all be factored in.But again, for the moment, law seems to be interested only in the organisational details of a protest, not the justness or reasonableness of it. Protest is framed increasingly as a law and order problem, not as a problem of genuine political grievances, protected by rights in a democracy.There is a seamlessness now between the populist discourse around anarchy, the police and the prosecution’s conspiracy theories and the questions with which the courts occupy themselves before ruling on any question of breach of rights.Also read: Beaten, Private Parts Hit, Phones Snatched, Minors Not Spared: Pandwalan Khurd Detainees Recount Evening of HorrorEven the violence of the French protests has been mentioned, again seamlessly, in legal arguments and by twitter trolls, to justify excessive police apprehensions and consequent prohibitions on speech, sloganeering and also on unfurling the national flag.The French would be very confused by this because, despite the violence, there is no serious talk there around permanently prohibiting protests from de-notified places, or confining them to designated suburbs or making protesters sign personal bonds.On the other hand, fast-tracked trials have already concluded as of October 21 for several hundred of the accused, who were referred to trial for allegations of rioting or looting during the October 17 protests. The French court has awarded suspended sentences and community service to most of the convicted.The law’s easy categorisation of citizens as good and bad also acts as discouragement to the model ones from supporting the dissenters. It has only led to more fear and polarisation, instead of forming public opinion around the need to acknowledge and hopefully resolve grievances. How is it that nobody is trying to mediate or suggest a middle ground, by way of an independent public audit of the CEC and of the SIR?Nobody is saying, in the sage, sacrificial Indian way, that it is only a post-retirement job, be done with it – just resign, and deflect the inconvenience.Sharukh Alam is a lawyer who practices in Delhi.