Supreme Court pauses high court order to open road outside CM Bhagwant Mann's house

Supreme Court pauses high court order to open road outside CM Bhagwant Mann’s house

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Punjab and Haryana High Court order for the opening of a barricaded road outside Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann’s residence in Chandigarh. The top court’s order came after both the Centre and the Punjab government vehemently opposed the opening of the road for public use, citing threat perceptions.

The road outside the official residence of the Punjab Chief Minister has been blocked since 1980.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Union Territory for Chandigarh, told a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta that, “This is playing with somebody’s life. How can the high court say intelligence reports are a figment of imagination?”

Agreeing with the Solicitor General, the Advocate General of Punjab said, “There is a resurgence of terrorism. Grenades were thrown at our intelligence building.”

At the start of the hearing, Justice Khanna had suggested that, “Let this arrangement go on for one more week. Sometimes people are put to inconvenience because of road blockages.”

However, AG Punjab cited the incident of popular singer Siddhu Moose Wala’s murder and said that was an eye-opener for all of us.

Solicitor General Mehta also agreed, and said, “There is a threat perception. We need to be careful. We have seen what has happened in the past. Will the high court take the responsibility of allowing the road to be opened just in front of the Chief Minister’s house?”

Towards the end of the hearing, Solicitor General Mehta quoted a dialogue from a film to drive home his point, “Terrorists have to succeed once… The agency will have to succeed every time.”

The bench was hearing the Punjab government’s challenge to an order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, while dealing with a suo motu matter pertaining to traffic woes and infrastructure problems in Chandigarh.

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