Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk on Thursday told the Supreme Court that he has a democratic right to criticise the government and that such statements do not threaten national security, Bar and Bench reported.
Lawyer Kapil Sibal, representing Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali Angmo, made the argument while challenging the activist’s detention under the National Security Act.
Wangchuk was detained on September 26 after protests in Leh demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. During the protests, demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at security personnel, injuring several of them. Four persons were killed in police firing.
On Thursday, Sibal said there was nothing wrong with protesting against the destruction of the environment in Ladakh. “If Ladakh is to remain pristine, we don’t want any kind of activity that destroys the environment,” Bar and Bench quoted him as telling a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale.
The lawyer told the court that there was no case of violence against Wangchuk, and that only acts of violence attributed to him would constitute grounds of detention.
“All the statements relied upon are verbal statements,” Sibal was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench. “Other than that, there’s the padyatra [march] and anshan [hunger strike]. These are not violent acts.”
The lawyer said that many statements cited to justify Wangchuk’s detention were either misattributed or misconstrued. He said it had been wrongly alleged that the activist said he would overthrow the government if Ladakh was not given statehood.
Sibal quoted Wangchuk as having said that a government that did not have affection for citizens and did not care for the environment was “an obstacle in the progress of the nation”, the legal news outlet reported.
The court then asked him about an alleged statement by Wangchuk saying that Ladakhis would not help the Army. Sibal maintained that Wangchuk had not said so, adding that the speech in question was from over three months before the detention order.
The lawyer further said that the authorities had ignored videos in which Wangchuk had praised the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bar and Bench reported.
“They don’t show all this,” Sibal said. “And put selective things in the grounds of detention. They show as if I am advocating a plebiscite. I never made such statements.”
Citizens are allowed to criticise the authorities, and anti-government sentiments do not affect the security of the state, the lawyer was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench.
“The Sixth Schedule was a promise given by a political party,” Sibal noted. “It was given in 2020. If in 2025 he says fulfil it before elections, what’s wrong with it?”
Including Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution would allow for the creation of autonomous development councils to govern land, public health and agriculture.
On August 5, 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
The lack of a legislature in Ladakh has led to increasing insecurities among the residents of the Union Territory about their land, nature, resources and livelihoods, and stoked fears that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem may be in jeopardy.
Following Wangchuk’s detention, key regional groups Apex Body Leh and Kargil Democratic Alliance withdrew from the talks with the government, stating that “talks cannot be held at gunpoint”.
Also read: Nine false claims about Sonam Wangchuk – and why they fall flat
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