NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday took a critical view of protests blocking public spaces and sought responses from the Centre and Delhi Police on a plea seeking removal of agitators from Shaheen Bagh . The petition said lakhs of commuters were being harassed due to blockage of the main road connecting Noida-Delhi-Faridabad for nearly two months.Entertaining petitioner Amit Sahni's appeal against the Delhi high court order dismissing his plea, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K M Joseph said, "The protests have been on for a long time. There cannot be an indefinite period of protest in a common area. It could be done at an area identified for protests. Can someone block the public road?"When the petitioner sought interim relief, the bench posted the matter for further hearing on February 17 and said it would consider the plea only after hearing the other side. The SC asked, "If this (Shaheen Bagh type protests) happens in other places, what will happen?"The HC had refused to pass any order on Sahni's plea while asking the authorities to look into the problem. He had asked if protesters had an unfettered right to stage demonstrations for an indefinite period at a public place of their choice?Sahni had questioned the authorities for not acting when protests by a section of the population violated fundamental right of lakhs of people to access public roads. The authorities had been mute spectators to the hardship caused to lakhs of people, he said. Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act at Shaheen Bagh were at the centre of a heated campaign for the Delhi elections which concluded on Saturday and the results of which will be declared on Tuesday. Activists and Muslim groups, as well as some common citizens, have made the protest a rallying cry against CAA while BJP has attacked the protests as being part of a design of sedition and disharmony.