Police denies LGBTQ+ people from holding Pride parade in Mumbai

File Image: Mumbai Pride parade

Mumbai Police has denied permission to the LGBTQIA+ community from taking out their 11th Pride March in the cosmopolitan city.

Every year, members of the LGBTQIA+ community hold the Pride parade in Mumbai to celebrate and commemorate queer history. However, this year, Mumbai Police has denied permission for holding the Queer Azaadi Mumbai Pride 2020 at the August Kranti Maidan.

The information was shared from the official Twitter handles of Mumbai Pride as well as LGBTQIA+ activist Harish Iyer, who posted a scanned image of the notice with a caption, which read: "Our rights and our freedoms cannot be sacrificed."

Our rights and our freedoms, cannot be sacrificed. Silence is the biggest violence. Stand up. Speak up.

Literally, we have been denied our pride. #PrideKidhar? pic.twitter.com/2TnGolstyb — harish (@hiyer) January 29, 2020

According to the notice, Iyer and the Humsafar Trust, one of the litigants who moved the courts to withdraw Section 377, had written to the city police seeking permission to hold the annual Pride parade, which has been taking place in Mumbai since 2008.

However, Mumbai Police has denied permission saying that people in the march will also talk about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), and that slogans will be raised against the Central government.

In another tweet, Iyer tagged Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and Shiv Sena leaders Aaditya Thackeray and Priyanka Chaturvedi seeking permission to hold the Pride parade, saying "Mumbai Police works under the state government".

"We all are a mixture of identities. Queer is just one of those. Moreover we live in a democracy. The NRC/CAA issue, for and against, is a Queer Rights issue. We don't exist in the forefront or margins, we also exist in intersections. We don't live isolated desolate lives", Iyer added.

The Pride parade is held every year in Mumbai and usually begins from August Kranti Maidan and ends at Girgaum Chowpatty.