The Supreme Court-appointed mediators on Wednesday met with the Shaheen Bagh protesters, who have been staging a sit-in vigil against the CAA for over two months now. The protesters are blocking one of the arterial roads of the national capital and causing grave inconvenience to the commuters. The Apex court has appointed the mediators to convince the protesters to shift to a different location so that the road can be re-opened.
However, the mediation on Wednesday remained inconclusive as court-appointed interlocutors Sanjay Hegde and Sadhana Ramachandran claimed that they will come back tomorrow again for taking forward the mediation. “We met them and listened to them. We asked them if we should return tomorrow as it is impossible to complete the talks in a single day. They said they wanted us to come back tomorrow so we will,” Ramachandran said.
“The Supreme Court has said that you have the right to protest. The law (CAA) has been challenged in the Supreme Court. But like us, others too have their rights, like the right to use roads, open their shops,” Sadhana Ramachandran said.
Earlier today, one of the interlocutors, Sanjay Hegde, addressed the packed crowd of protesters at Shaheen Bagh. Hegde asked the protesters to shift the protest site as it was causing inconvenience to the travellers. However, one elder protester opposed this suggestion saying, “When the government is not listening to us while we are protesting, they won’t even care if we vacate this place.”
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The elder women protesting at Shaheen Bagh also asked Hegde to first request the police to open their barricades before asking them to clear the road. As the mediation did not yield any tangible outcome today, the demonstrators at Shaheen Bagh offered the interlocutors to continue the mediation till Sunday, one day before the Supreme Court hearing in the matter resumes.
Earlier, the apex court had expressed concern on the obstruction of one of the busiest thoroughfares of Delhi in Shaheen Bagh and asked that the anti-CAA protestors shift to another protest site. The court-appointed the senior advocate Sanjay Hegde to act as a mediator to convince protesters to move their protest to an alternative site where no public place is blocked.