Groups want to rise above 20 feet, seek PM’s intervention

The dahi handi groups of Mumbai have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate an ordinance allowing dahi handis (human pyramids) to rise above 20 feet on Gokulashtami, which will be celebrated on 25 August, Thursday. Pinning their hopes on a miracle, the dahi handi mandals have expressed their desire for an ordinance by the President of India, overriding the recent Supreme Court order that restricted the height of their human “pyramids” to 20 feet. They have written to the Prime Minister and the President for the same. But a Constitutional expert told The Sunday Guardian that the issue will have to be scrutinised properly to know if the President can issue such an ordinance. In any case, the process is highly unlikely to be completed before 25 August. “Under the Constitution, what Parliament can do by law, the President can do by ordinance. The question is whether Parliament can pass such a law. For that, the matter has to be examined on the facts of the case. The existing Constitutional provisions will have to be studied. But I doubt whether Parliament can do such a thing. I doubt whether such a thing can be done in a hurry. It will require detailed scrutiny,” Dr Subhash C. Kashyap, an authority on the Indian Constitution, told The Sunday Guardian from New Delhi.

Noted political scientist and columnist Suhas Palshikar said nothing was possible at this juncture. The Supreme Court is still in the process of hearing the petition. “When the judgement is given, maybe at that stage, the government can do something about it. At that time, the government will have to define the right to healthy life, and make exceptions to it for religious festivals.” He specified that it will be a blanket legislation then and will not specifically apply only to dahi handis. “The demand that the Prime Minister should intervene right now and offer relief is an over-enthusiastic expectation,” he said. A retired judge of the Bom- bay High Court, too, expressed apprehension about it. The Bombay High Court had first passed the judgement about restrictions on dahi handi in 2014, while hearing a PIL in the matter. “For making any law on this, they will first have to define dahi handi, and say whether it is a sport or a religious tradition. The object of the Act will have to be defined,” he said while refusing to be