The Supreme Court is likely to take up a petition on Wednesday by the West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seeking permission to carry out a rath yatra in the state.

The state unit of the BJP filed the petition on December 24 and sought an urgent hearing on the same date by the top court, which was denied. The appeal came after a division bench of the Calcutta high court stayed a single judge bench order that allowed the party to hold the rath yatra in the state.

The party’s state unit vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said in the petition that the “right to protest is recognised as a fundamental right under the constitution” and “assumptions” cannot be the ground to take “arbitrary decision on the pretext of reasonable restriction”. The petition claimed that there was total lawlessness in West Bengal as a large number of BJP workers have been killed for showing dissent to the state government.

The three-phased rath yatra, also being called the ‘Save Democracy Rally’, was scheduled to begin on December 7. The BJP has decorated air-conditioned buses as raths or chariots for the yatra covering all the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state to galvanise support ahead of the national elections due this year. The rallies were to be flagged off by BJP president Amit Shah.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee took a stinging jibe at the BJP last Friday, saying such yatras are typically conducted in the name of God, and not meant to indulge in riots.

“There are yatras for Lord Krishna and Lord Jagannath, we take part in those rath yatras. Those who carry out yatras to kill common people indulge in ‘danga’ yatras,” Banerjee said at a public distribution programme in Sagar Island.

“We don’t insult anybody. We respect everyone irrespective of their religious affinity,” she added.

First Published: Jan 02, 2019 09:58 IST