"Jantar Mantar protests expose structural youth unemployment and governance accountability gaps"
Vertical Accountability
citizens holding elected representatives responsible through periodic elections.
Horizontal Accountability
state institutions overseeing each other through legislatures, courts, and audit bodies.
The right to peaceful assembly and protest is guaranteed under Article 19(1)(b) of the Constitution, subject to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(3) on grounds such as sovereignty, public order, and decency. Complementing this, Article 19(1)(a) protects freedom of speech and expression, subject to Article 19(2). The Supreme Court has consistently held — in landmark rulings such as Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary (2012) and Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) — that restrictions on assembly and expression must satisfy tests of proportionality and necessity, not mere administrative convenience. The protest site at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi itself reflects the state's attempt to channel dissent into bounded, manageable zones, raising questions about whether such channelling respects or dilutes the fundamental right.
India's constitutional design envisions overlapping accountability mechanisms:
The National Testing Agency (NTA), established under the Ministry of Education as an autonomous body, was created to conduct entrance examinations for higher education institutions with the explicit promise of standardisation, transparency, and merit-based selection. Repeated examination irregularities — including paper leaks — have eroded public confidence in this institutional promise, making the examination system a live governance concern rather than a purely administrative one.
Political scientists distinguish between at least two classical forms of democratic accountability. Vertical accountability refers to the mechanism by which citizens hold elected representatives responsible through periodic elections — the most familiar and formalised channel. Horizontal accountability refers to continuous oversight exercised by state institutions over one another — parliamentary committees, independent regulators, judicial review, and audit bodies. When formal institutional channels for policy feedback atrophy — when parliamentary committees are bypassed, regulatory bodies are captured, and media scrutiny is weakened — citizens resort to societal accountability, exercising pressure through protest, petitions, and public mobilisation.
Parliament's procedural toolkit for Opposition accountability includes the Adjournment Motion (Rule 56, Lok Sabha Rules of Procedure), Calling Attention Motions, Zero Hour, and Short Duration Discussions under Rule 193. These instruments allow members to flag urgent matters without displacing the legislative calendar. …
Democracy's superior virtue lies in the fact that it calls into activity
Which one of the following factors constitutes the best safeguard of liberty in a liberal democracy?
Consider the following statements regarding the constitutional right to protest in India:
1.Article 19(1)(b) guarantees the right to assemble peaceably and without arms.
2.Restrictions on the right to assembly under Article 19(3) can be imposed on grounds of public order and sovereignty of India.
3.The Supreme Court in Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary (2012) held that dispersal of peaceful assemblies requires no judicial oversight.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Assertion (A): Symbolic concessions by a government — such as ministerial resignations and task force announcements — can end a specific protest cycle without resolving the structural conditions that produced it.
Reason (R): The right to protest under Article 19(1)(b) of the Indian Constitution is absolute and cannot be restricted under any circumstances.
Which of the following is correct?
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