The judiciary had over the past few months received a  lot of flak over its approach in treating the cases of Arnab Goswami and Siddique Kappan. Its indifference with the farmers’ protests was also observed.

Regarding the ongoing farmers’ protests, the Supreme Court of India said, “We are of the view at this stage that the farmers’ protest should be allowed to continue without impediment & without any breach of peace either by the protesters or police.”

SCI today acknowledged the right of farmers to non-violent protests, and said that it was thinking of setting up an “impartial and independent” panel of agriculture experts and farmer unions to resolve the impasse over three contentious farm laws with glaring loopholes.

A bench headed by CJI S A Bobde said that it would set up the committee which may include experts like P Sainath and representatives of the government and farmers’ bodies to look for the resolution of the deadlock over the statutes. The bench also comprising justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said, “We acknowledge the right of farmers to protest but it has to be non-violent.”

In a hearing conducted via video conferencing, the top court said that the purpose of staging protest can be achieved if the farmers and the government hold talks and “we wish to facilitate that”. “We will not decide the validity of law today. The only thing which we will decide is the issue of protest and the right to move freely,” the bench made clear at the outset of the hearing which is still going on.

The hearing comes amid heavy criticism of the judiciary in the public domain and a day after the Supreme Court said that the government’s negotiations with the protesting farmers have “not worked apparently” and that it will form a committee having representatives of both sides to resolve the deadlock. Agriculture minister expressed hope that there will be a solution “soon” to the ongoing impasse.

Protesting farmer unions said that constituting a new panel to break the stalemate on the three new agri-laws is not a solution as they want a complete withdrawal of the legislations. They also said that the government should have formed a committee of farmers and others before the laws were enacted by Parliament. Abhimanyu Kohar, a leader of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sabha which is one of 40 protesting farmer unions, said that they have already rejected a recent government offer to form such a panel.