Organisers of the We20 summit of social activists and Opposition leaders on Sunday said police thwarting their Delhi seminar was proof that they had “shaken the government”.

On Saturday, the second day of the event, described as a “people’s summit on the G20” that is to be organised here in three weeks, the police forcibly shut the gates of H.K.S. Surjeet Bhawan in central Delhi while Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and JDU parliamentarian Aneel Hegde were participating in a discussion inside. Several participants, including CPI leader Annie Raja and right-to-food activist Anjali Bhardwaj, were prevented from entering the premises on the ground that permission was not sought for the event.

The CPM, which owns the venue, said they were within their rights to hold events indoors. But the police rejected this, citing law and order concerns.

Early on Sunday, the final day of the event, permission was formally refused by the police.

The organisers, who include NGOs, trade unions and activists from across India, passed a resolution saying: “The We20 Summit shook the government as was evident from the Delhi police’s attempt to suppress people’s voices by barricading the venue on the second day to stop the entry of delegates who came to attend the workshops.”

They added: “We strongly condemn the erosion of democratic institutions and spaces, the attack on the constitutional values, civil society groups, human rights defenders and academic bodies, the use of digital surveillance and data privacy, the dilution of laws related to right to information, criminalisation of dissent, unjust use of government agencies to suppress people’s voices, and increased social antagonisms and communal tension engineered by Right-wing forces.”

The resolution further said: “We bear witness that the preparations for the G20 mega-events in New Delhi and in many other cities across India have led to gross violations of human rights of thousands of urban poor and marginalised communities, who have been forcibly evicted from their homes and deprived of their livelihoods without due process, compensation or proper rehabilitation.”

The resolution added: “Evicting the poor, hiding working class settlements behind high curtains and spending public money for political gains explicitly contradict India’s much-cherished ‘Mother of Democracy’ claim.”

In a media release, the organisers said: “Under duress the Summit had to be curtailed. But we hold the legal right to challenge the order in Court…. By sending the police to stop the People’s Summit, the Modi administration, under which the police department is, was sending a clear message that they do not want to listen to people’s issues.”

They added: “While in the official G20 summit there are claims of us being the ‘Mother of Democracy’, the state of affairs that we have witnessed here at the We20 People’s Summit only goes on to show how we are inching closer to being a police state.”