Rule of Law

The Supreme Court in 2025: Deference, technicality and the retreat from rights

From citizenship and reservation to encounter accountability, privacy, environmental protection and minority rights, the Court's most contentious judgments of 2025 reveal an increasing preference for institutional deference and procedural compliance over substantive constitutional justice

Union government challenges Calcutta High Court repatriation order, moves Supreme Court instead even as Bangladesh declares six deported Bengalis Indian citizens

Rather than complying with the Calcutta High Court’s directive to bring back six wrongly deported residents of West Bengal’s Birbhum district, the Union government has challenged the order in the Supreme Court — even as a Bangladesh court and multiple documents affirm the victims’ Indian citizenship

Statistical Amnesia: How Communal Violence Vanishes in NCRB 2023

When “rioting” becomes the default label, targeted violence is invisible—this is India’s quiet apocalypse in the NCRB 2023 report

Understanding the Supreme Court’s Interim Intervention in the Waqf Amendments, 2025

Be it on the issue of the disproportionately stringent control over the Islamic institution of Waqf (as compared to the administration of Hindu muths or temples), the Supreme Court’s part interim reliefs to the controversial 2025 Waqf Amendment Act, risk a judicial stamp on the state’s sledgehammer approach; a detailed analysis of the SC’s interim order dated September 15, 2025

Allahabad High Court directs UP Police to ensure safe return of inter-faith to their desired destination

Missing after court testimony, inter-faith couple rescued, ‘Liberty Can’t Be Curtailed by Social Pressure,’ says Allahabad HC in holiday hearing, slams police for illegal detention, directed the SSP Aligarh to conduct an inquiry into the entire incident and submit a detailed report by November 28

“They were once sent back”: Court refrains from probing State’s claim as Assam seeks to justify continued detention

No evidence produced to support alleged deportation; Court yet to examine verification question, to deliver order on October 24 on legality of continued detention

From Victim to Accused: High Court of Gujarat’s 2025 Ruling on Religious Conversion

In a decision that may reverberate across India's legal milieu and minority rights landscape, the Gujarat High Court has ruled that individuals who have been forcibly or wrongfully converted themselves may be charged in criminal proceedings if they then "influence" or abet someone else to convert

ADR refutes allegation of giving false voter affidavit in SC hearing

ADR clarifies no false affidavit was filed in Supreme Court, rebuts ECI counsel’s claims with verified voter data, upholds commitment to factual accuracy and non-partisan reporting, and expresses concern over treatment of elector involved following recent court proceedings

Bangladesh Court declares six deported Bengalis as Indian citizens, orders their repatriation

In a dramatic reversal, a Bangladesh court has ruled that two families — including a pregnant woman from West Bengal’s Birbhum district — who were forcibly deported from Delhi as “illegal Bangladeshis” are in fact Indian citizens, citing their Aadhaar and home addresses

Crimes Uncounted: When Data Becomes the State’s Defence

A delay of two years, unreliable hate-crime statistics, and discarded sedition charges, the NCRB 2023 Report offers us marginal data on crime but plentiful data on social control

Mere Presence Does Not Imply Guilt: Supreme Court defines clear test for liability under unlawful assembly

In a significant ruling on mob liability, the Court acquitted ten men convicted for a 1988 double murder in Bihar, laying down a definitive test to distinguish innocent bystanders from participants in an unlawful assembly

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Delhi: Between Protection & Prayer: Stories of revered sites now under the protection of ASI

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Three decades after the PoA Act, justice remains elusive

A comprehensive 30-year review of the SC/ST Atrocities Act reveals a persistent gap between the law's transformative promise and the lived realities of Dalits and Adivasis confronting violence, discrimination, and impunity

The Supreme Court in 2025: Deference, technicality and the retreat from rights

From citizenship and reservation to encounter accountability, privacy, environmental protection and minority rights, the Court's most contentious judgments of 2025 reveal an increasing preference for institutional deference and procedural compliance over substantive constitutional justice

Who owns Mumbai’s streets? The Bombay High Court, street vendors and a decade of regulatory failure

What began as a case about encroachments has become a searching inquiry into the State's failure to implement the Street Vendors Act, the rights of pedestrians and informal workers, and the growing role of identification and verification in urban governance

Defectors & Democracy: A critique of the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution

The right of voters to recall representatives who defect—as seen in West Bengal, Maharashtra, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh—and the requirement of intra-party democracy could form part of a broader institutional redesign. Such measures would deepen democratic values and, above all, signal a refusal by citizens to accept the corruption of their mandate. These may be among the reforms that India's Parliament and democracy most urgently need

A regressive 2026 amendment to rights of Trans persons is under legal challenge even as pride month is celebrated

Unable to stay the statute, High Courts have charted a middle path—protecting petitioners already undergoing hormone therapy while the broader constitutional challenge awaits adjudication by the Supreme Court