The Ranchi district administration is looking for a permanent protest venue within the periphery of the capital city, on the lines of Ramleela Ground in New Delhi, to ensure that protestors can raise their concerns and be heard without disrupting traffic or causing inconvenience to people, officials said on Thursday.
A special team of officials has been constituted to search for this protest site, which would ideally be a place from where th protestors can be visible to ministers and authorities, but not be able to disrupt daily activities in the city, Ranchi SPSaurav said.
“We have shortlisted a few locations. One is close to the new Vidhan Sabha building and the other one is near Dhurwa Chowk,” said Saurav, a part of the team that is conducting the search. “We are trying to finalise a site before the upcoming Vidhan Sabha session. A report will be submitted to the Ranchi Deputy Commissioner and he will take the final call,” added the city SP.
As of now, there is no fixed venue for protests in Ranchi. Protestors here usually stage demonstrations either close to the Raj Bhawan or outside the old Vidhan Sabha building. Some protest rallies are also held at Morabadi at the heart of the city. However, these protests often lead to traffic congestion, disrupting normal life in the state capital.
Another member of the team said that protests played an important role in any democratic structure and people have the right to protest. However, it was the administration’s responsibility to ensure that the protests are held at a strategic location so that the demands of the protestors are heard but people do not face any difficulty, he added.
The month-long budget session in Jharkhand is set to begin on February 26, and several groups have already announced plans to stage protests during the time. While the 65,000-odd para teachers have threatened to demonstrate during the session demanding regularization of services, some tribal outfits are also likely to stage protests demanding the inclusion of a separate Sarna code in the upcoming Census, sources said.
In 2017, the Delhi administration had also changed the official protest site from historic Jantar Mantar to Ramleela Ground at Ajmeri Gate – away from Lutyens Delhi – following a National Green Tribunal (NGT) directive which stated that protests at Jantar Mantar caused sound pollution.