UP police remove loudspeakers from religious places

India Tomorrow

NEW DELHI—The Uttar Pradesh police removed 3,238 loudspeakers on Monday in a state-wide drive which will continue till December 22 in all 75 districts.

This move against loudspeakers targets public places but is in the news mostly for the speakers of religious places. The drive is for checking decibel levels and legality of loudspeakers. Accordingly, the decibel levels of 7,288 loudspeakers were lowered. However, the state government has not provided a break-up of figures on religious lines.

According to the state police, 61,399 loudspeakers installed at public or religious places were checked across the state on the first day of the drive. Reportedly, notice has been issued to over a hundred religious places. According to the police, a maximum of 698 loudspeakers were removed in the Gorakhpur zone while the volume of the highest number (1975) of loudspeakers was lowered in Bareilly.

The order to remove the loudspeakers from religious places/public places was issued by the special director general, law and order, Prashant Kumar on November 22. It refers to a letter issued by the Uttar Pradesh government on October 10 against the illegal and uncontrolled use of loudspeakers.

According to government papers, the permissible level of sound in industrial areas is 75 decibels in the day and 70 decibels in the night. In commercial areas, 65 decibels in the day and 55 decibels at night are allowed. In residential areas, the permissible level is 55 decibels in the day and 45 decibels in the night. In the silence zone, the permissible level of sound is 50 decibels while it is 40 decibels at night.

One official paper mentions that after dialogue and coordination with the religious leaders, the order to remove illegal loudspeakers and maintain the permissible decibels has been issued. It also discusses that uncontrolled and unwanted use of loudspeakers causes rift and tension in society.

Although the special director general, law and order, Prashant Kumar says that no individual or community would be harassed on the pretext of removing or lowering the sound of loudspeakers, the loudspeaker removal order has an Azan angle to it. One FIR each was filed in Agra commissionerate and Pratapgarh while 21 people were fined, or “challaned” in local legal parlance, in Gautam Buddha Nagar for not reducing decibel levels. The names of the people fined are not known.

On May 4, 2022, the Allahabad High Court passed an order saying that using a loudspeaker at a mosque was not a fundamental right. This order was passed after a petition was filed by a resident of Budaun district. The petitioner had complained that the sub-divisional magistrate of Bisauli tehsil of the district refused their request to use a loudspeaker for Azan.

The court had passed the order while dismissing the plea. The petitioner had argued that the SDM’s order was illegal and violated his fundamental and legal rights to use a loudspeaker at the mosque.

There is no mention of which religious places were checked and their loudspeakers removed. But a report in a prestigious Urdu daily from Lucknow suggests that this was done at the time of Azan for the dawn prayers in the mosques. According to a report published by the Hindustan Times, the Allahabad high court and its Lucknow bench had on several occasions directed the state government to take action against loudspeakers that were put up illegally.