The SC says....

The Supreme Court has said that political parties supporting an agitation should be derecognised if public property is destroyed during the stir. "Destruction of public property and disrupting train services cannot be allowed in the name of agitation. Political parties behind such agitation must be derecognised and people must be sent behind bars for such acts. Such activities are not acceptable as those promote lawlessness," a bench comprising Justice GS Singhvi and Justice AK Ganguly said . The court indicated that it would frame guidelines fixing responsibility on state governments for their failure to deal with agitationists destroying public property. It asked the Haryana government to explain why it should not pay the loss incurred by Railways during the course of 11-day stir organised by 12 'khap' panchayats against booking of some ‘upper caste’ people in connection with the Mirchpur Dalit killings case. "You must make some payment to Railways for its losses. You pay the money according to your own estimates," the bench said. The Centre had told the court that Railways had suffered a loss of . 33.95 crore due to the agitation. The court also sought the responses of all parties to suggest guidelines and on fixing responsibility for damage done to public property during agitation. The state submitted that a loss of . 45.92 lakh was caused to the Transport Department due to agitation and . 90,000 spent by the Forest Department in removing 3,130 trees uprooted by protesters. Villagers had been protesting the booking of 98 members of their community in a case relating to the killing of 70-year-old Tara Chand and his physically-challenged teenaged daughter Suman at Mirchpur village in Hisar on April 21 last year. Demanding a fresh probe into the Dalit killings, the ‘upper caste’ people of Mirchpur and other adjoining villages in Hisar district had brought rail and road traffic to Delhi via Jind to a grinding halt earlier this month. Members of the pre-dominant Jat community squatted on the railway tracks at Julani village, near Jind railway station in December last year, disrupting railway traffic on the Jind-Jakhal section of the Delhi-Ferozepur route. Protesters also blocked road traffic in Jind and other places, besides locking up the Haryana Roadways bus depot in many places.