The coronavirus infection is rising alarmingly. But the initial panic is gone. People are starting to socialise like pre-corona days as if the pathogen has lost its virulence. ‘Herd immunity' will never happen because at least 60% of the population needs to be infected which means big number of lives gone. Vaccines are touted to have been discovered, which is false news. It is not medically possible to declare a safe vaccine unless human trials are done across a year or more. Baseless claims have turned gullible masses careless and the infection rate is rising for this single reason. Brash, young people have begun believing that they will not be affected due to ‘age advantage' and the inherent immunity they enjoy. Further, most people have started carrying masks in pockets or hanging them loosely around the neck as police guys look away. There is hardly any fine slapped on the care-a-damn offenders. Unless penalty is slapped exemplarily, nothing much will change. The public has to be empowered to track down police officials who are not doing their job of ensuring ‘social distancing' and mask use which are the only vaccine available now.

Most surprisingly, on June 22, the Supreme Court disappointed the public by overturning its own Car Festival cancellation ruling as gross disruption of public order was apprehended. The order reversal has drawn massive public flak from top legal luminaries and conscious citizens. The Puri annual festival attracts nearly one million people. But due to the corona pandemic, every event, social, religious or political, has been banned unconditionally by the Union and State Governments. Accordingly, the Odisha Government stuck to the safety norms and never allowed any crowd-pulling festival to keep masses safe. The Gajapati king, as the principal servitor of the Lord, made wild appeals to the Government for going ahead with car making which, he said, was not a religious act. He was provoked to believe, by headless servitors, that cancelling the festival would spell doom for mankind. The State Government, which had put everything on hold, was, thus, inclined to seek advice from the Centre which, in turn, threw the ball back to the State’s court. A few rationalists then moved the Orissa High Court to clamp a complete ban on the festival because the preparation for the festival was on as if corona had never happened. The High court passed an order permitting the festival without a crowd. Rationalists appealed to the Supreme Court which rightly ruled out the event as no other religious festival was allowed in the country. Gajapati was prodded again by illiterate Daita servitors who kept bluffing about dire consequences befalling the deities, who, they said, would have to remain outside the sanctum sanctorum for long twelve years. Gajapati pleaded with the Chief Minister to have the festival conducted anyhow. So, the State Government sided with the petitioners who sought an urgent review by the top court. Meanwhile, the BJP too supported the move by filing an additional petition. The matter was listed to be heard just before the day of the festival by a single-judge Bench. But no one knows why the CJI, vacationing at his Nagpur home, acted about the matter and set up a three-judge Bench headed by himself to hear the matter on a videoconference mode all within a matter of hours. The CJI made the Bench agree to permit the festival without crowd. The conscious citizens are still in a state of shock. The order is evidently lopsided and against standard legal norms. As per standard legal provisions, the epidemiological necessity of curtailing mass gatherings, notwithstanding its religious significance, has to be respected anyhow. The court’s brusque order creates worrying precedents for the rights jurisprudence in the larger socio-political backdrop of contemporary India. Through a catena of judgments, the position of the law is that religious freedom cannot infringe the various rights of others.

The first judicial order, passed on June 18, implicitly restated a well-established legal principle that the right to freely profess one’s religion is subject to public health. This restriction is recognised within Article 25, which confirms the right to practise one’s religion. Such restrictions are necessary to bolster different rights of others. The enforcement of the right of religious freedom of some could endanger the right to life and health of others, which is simultaneously guaranteed by Article 21.

All said and done, the best gains have been made by the Odisha Government. The State officials got a golden opportunity to prove their skills. The senior officials, in collaboration with the no-nonsense temple chief administrator Krishan Kumar and the immensely popular Puri district magistrate Balwant Singh managed to have the huge festival conducted with only an 18-hour preparation time. No crowd was to be sighted around the Grand Road, on which the cars would roll. Everyone enjoyed the show on the television as the public opinion was obviously against the usual crowded festival. Most people have turned enormously sore with the Daita servitors, who are headless, master fear-mongers and adept at arm-twisting Government functionaries to cough out hush money.

Now it is an established fact that the Car Festival does not require a big congregation to make the cars roll. The smaller the crowd, the better it is for all to see events clearly as the pinhead servitors who have been the biggest impediment to all well-organised events. Hopefully, in future, the State administration will restrict the number of people pulling at the ropes by having aspirants chosen on a ‘first-come-first avail' basis, limiting the number to a maximum of 500 per car. Spectators can be seated on either side of the Grand Road on nominal payments like it’s done at the Republic Day extravaganza in Delhi.