Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India

The movement that made transparency a statute went to court for the older right — to gather and be heard.

• Protesters — farmers, ex-servicemen, the MKSS — had gathered at Jantar Mantar, Delhi's designated protest ground; Delhi Police had kept Section 144 CrPC orders in near-perpetual force around it.
• MKSS petitioned: a prohibitory order that never ends converts the right to assemble into an illusion.
• The Court (Sikri and Ashok Bhushan JJ.) laid down the balance: Article 19(1)(a) and (b) protect speech and assembly, including in the capital's sight and sound; the state may regulate time, place and manner for public order — but cannot extinguish the right.

Directions issued regulating protests at Jantar Mantar (designated areas, time limits, cleanliness and noise norms); the right to protest itself was affirmed, not abolished.

• The petitioner is the reason the RTI Act exists: MKSS's Jan Sunwais (public hearings on muster rolls), the Beawar dharna of 1996 and the 2004-05 national campaign produced the 2005 Act. This page keeps the corpus honest about what its own movement later argued in court.
• The constitutional root is shared: *State of U.P. v. Raj Narain* (1975) read the right to know out of Article 19(1)(a); this judgment works the same clause for assembly. Same root, two branches.
• Practice note: if you are citing a “Section 4 continuing duty” proposition, the authority line runs through *RBI v. Jayantilal N. Mistry* and the suo motu disclosure cases — not through this case.

Freedom of speech and assembly under Article 19(1)(a) and (b) extends to collective public protest; the state may impose reasonable time-place-manner restrictions for public order, but may not make protest impossible through perpetually renewed prohibitory orders.

Article 19(1)(a), Article 19(1)(b), right to protest, Section 144 CrPC, Jantar Mantar, MKSS

• §4 disclosure continuity — SC directive line (SC 2019)
• Land records & mutation — Allahabad HC (HC-UP 2017)
• Corporator funds utilisation — Maharashtra SIC (SIC-MH 2019)
• §2(h) applied to grant-receiving NGO (SC 2014)
• Ration card / PDS records — Kerala SIC (SIC-KL 2020)

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Editorial summary · CORRECTED 27 August 2026: the earlier text described this as a Section 4 proactive-disclosure ruling; verified against indiankanoon.org/doc/80616728, it is the Jantar Mantar right-to-protest case.