A petition filed in the Supreme Court on Friday sought immediate removal of the protesting farmers from Delhi’s borders, saying their continued presence would cause “havoc” by spreading Covid infections.

Petitioner Rishabh Sharma, a Delhi University law student, also cited the hardships the border siege was inflicting on the public. “Lives of lakhs of people protesting at Delhi’s borders (are) at immediate threat since the virus is very contagious and if by chance this coronavirus disease takes the shape of community spread, it will cause havoc in the country,” the petition said.

It sought the court’s “immediate intervention” and “appropriate direction for restricting mass gathering of people at any place”.

Thousands of farmers have gathered at Delhi’s borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh since November 26, protesting against three farm laws that the Centre bulldozed through Parliament in September.

“This protest is further blocking the roads for all the emergency/ medical services” at a time Delhi’s Covid cases are rising and outstation patients are looking to use the capital’s hospital facilities, the petition said.

Policemen block the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Friday. (PTI)

Farmers eat at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border on Friday. Picture by Prem Singh

Women prepare pinni, a sweet, for farmers in Jalandhar. (PTI)

Farmers cook for their fellow protesters at Singhu border on Friday. (PTI)

It said Delhi police had on November 27 allowed the protesters to gather peacefully at a ground in the Burari locality but they were still blockading Delhi’s borders.

The petition cited the recent apex court judgment in the Shaheen Bagh case that said protests cannot be allowed to block public roads and that an indefinite number of people cannot assemble wherever they choose.

It also cited another apex court judgment — Himat Lal K. Shah vs Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad & Anr, 1973 — that had observed: “The social interest promoted by untrammelled exercise of freedom of utterance and assembly in public street must yield to social interest which prohibition and regulation of speech are designed to protect. But there is a constitutional difference between reasonable regulation and arbitrary exclusion.”

The petition argued that the government was “not in a position to remove these protesters as they are huge in number”, and that “this protest is causing lot of trouble to the citizens of India”.