Examine the tension between citizens' right to peaceful protest and the state's security imperatives during major international summits, with reference to India's BRICS presidency in 2026.

Article 19(1)(b) guarantees the right to assemble peaceably, but Article 19(3) permits reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order. The refusal of permission for a protest march in Delhi in September 2026, days before the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit [5], illustrates how summit-time security recalibrates this balance.

The citizen's claim to protest

• Peaceful assembly is a constitutional right, not a privilege; the state's role is to regulate, not extinguish it.
• Protest is a channel of accountability — the student agitation over examination-integrity failures reached government only through sustained public demonstration [5].
• The Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin (2020) held restrictive orders must be legal, necessary, proportionate and periodically reviewed [2].

The state's security imperative

• Hosting heads of state creates an exceptional VVIP protection and crowd-control burden; India's 2026 BRICS chairship involves a year-long calendar of ministerial and leaders' meetings [4].
• Section 163, BNSS, 2023 — successor to CrPC Section 144 — allows an Executive Magistrate to issue preventive prohibitory orders, including against assemblies of five or more [1].
• Summit diplomacy carries reputational stakes for a host projecting Global South leadership [4].

Where the tension sharpens

• Prohibitory orders are executive, not judicial, and blanket area-wide bans risk becoming routine rather than exceptional [1].
• In Delhi, policing vests with the Union Home Ministry, distancing protest management from locally elected accountability.
• Yet in Amit Sahni (2020) the Court affirmed that no protest right is absolute, and public spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely [3].

The conflict is therefore not right-versus-security but proportionality-versus-convenience. Time-bound, narrowly drawn orders, reasoned written grounds, designated protest sites like Jantar Mantar kept genuinely open, and prompt judicial review can secure a summit without silencing dissent. A democracy confident enough to host the world is strongest when it lets the world see its citizens speak.