Supreme Court refuses to stay its judgment on SC

"People have taken to the streets", he said. The Court was hearing a plea by the Centre seeking an interim stay on the SC's March 20 order.

The SC, by insisting that cases under the Act may be filed only after conducting a preliminary investigation, was denying justice to the Dalits.

"The Act in the current state at least forced the police to immediately attend to such cases within the stipulated time frame".

Normal life in these regions were hit with agitators disrupting rail and road traffic and even blocking parts of national and state highways. The authorities have declared curfew in three districts.

"The law minister said the Centre was not a party to the petition, it is factually incorrect".

Protests in Jodhpur; PTI Photo.

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For instance, as shown in Chart 1, there was an increase of 23.6 per cent in cases of atrocities on scheduled castes (SCs) between 2008 and 2016.

Union minister and NDA ally Ram Vilas Paswan too has expressed apprehension over dilution of the atrocities Act.

While in Parliament Home Minister Rajanth Singh defended the Government, BJP president Amit Shah sought to attack the Opposition, particularly the Congress saying "microscopic minority of dejected and rejected political parties" made the people suffer and sought their apology to "Dalit sisters and brothers". "No relief can be given to the SC/ST community without protecting the fundamental rights of an innocent person", Justice Goel added. The Modi Government's commitment to fulfilling Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's vision is unwavering. But innocents can't be punished on unilateral version. "We don't want to deprive anyone from right to life and we make ourselves very clear that we are not against the Act or the complainants", a bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and U U Lalit said.

The bench made it clear that it would hear the Centre's plea for a review of the earlier judgment, along with those who were original parties in the main petition, including the Maharashtra government. You can do it in ten minutes or half an hour and register the FIR.

While the government is arguing that safeguards provided by the top would dilute the Act, the Bench said that protesters may not have read the judgment. "There is a lot of hearsay", observed Justice Goel. The bench further clarified that the "abuse" they were referring to was the abuse of police power and not the abuse of the Act by the members of the two titular categories.

The board said it has received a letter of request, dated April 1, 2018, from the director general (school education) of the Punjab government to postpone all its examinations scheduled to be held today on account of apprehensions of law and order problems and other disturbances in the day during the Bharat Bandh. "It is not a law of arrest that the moment an FIR is lodged, the accused is arrested" and the "procedure established by law should be fair, just and reasonable".