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

Beyond mere Recognition: The Jane Kaushik judgment and the next frontier of transgender equality

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court acknowledged the dignity and rights of employment of transgender individuals, ordered monetary compensation for a transwoman teacher who had been terminated from her position, and ordered that a model Equal Opportunity Policy be made mandatory in all institutions, going further than the Constitution's promise of equality in private employment

Judicial Pushback against Cow Vigilantism: Allahabad HC flags arbitrary FIRs, demands accountability from top officials

The Court exposes the way a regulatory law has become a system of targeted persecution of minorities through arbitrary FIRs under the 1955 law while ignoring the Supreme Court’s binding directives to prohibit group violence

Due Process Strengthened: Supreme Court mandates written, language-specific grounds for arrest under special laws and general laws

Building on Pankaj Bansal and Prabir Purkayastha judgements, the Court constitutionalised a uniform standard—every arrest, whether under IPC/BNS or special enactments, must be supported by written grounds communicated in the arrestee’s own language, failing which the arrest stands void

Screens of Silence: What NCRB Data Misses about Cybercrime in India

As India’s online world expands, so does the gap between crime and accountability. NCRB data records numbers, but not the reasons behind their soaring increase; besides erasure of reporting of gendered cybercrimes constitute a glaring gap: there is an absence of adequate reportage within NCRB on stalking, cyberbullying, morphing, which are show a mere 5 per cent of rise

Kerala High Court: First wife must be heard before registering Muslim man’s second marriage

Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan reasserts constitutional and gender equality, procedural fairness, and the emotional agency of Muslim women in a landmark judgment

Silence in the Statistics: What NCRB data won’t tell you about dissent

When fewer crimes are recorded, it may signal not peace, but the success of a system designed to silence without a trace

Uttarakhand HC pulls up police over mob attack in Ramnagar, seeks action against BJP leader for inciting communal violence

Bench directs action taken report by November 6; Petitioner alleges political protection to main accused

Guarding culture or policing faith? Chhattisgarh High Court’s ‘social menace’ observation and the future of Article 25

While affirming Gram Sabha authority under the PESA Act to prevent “forced conversions,” the Chhattisgarh High Court’s ruling raises deeper concerns about the limits of religious liberty, evidentiary reasoning, and constitutional secularism in India’s tribal heartland

Counting the Caged: What India’s prison data refuses to see

Two years after NCRB’s Prison Statistics India 2023 report was published, the numbers still read less like history and more like prophecy

Invisible Assaults: How India’s crime data erases violence against women and children

Statistics describe order; gendered violence exists outside the neat cells of spreadsheets. This article reconnects data with lived reality

Trending

Related VIDEOS

ALL STORIES

ALL STORIES

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

In Delhi, some monuments are not just remnants of the past. They continue to function as places of prayer, remain part of neighbourhood life, and exist within an ongoing struggle over who owns them, who maintains them, and who decides how they may be used. The authors examine the layered complexities involved

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

The what’s & why’s of Data Centres and how are they hijacking the India Story

While countries such as Singapore and Sweden are curbing the environmental costs of data centres through regulation and innovation, India is actively courting these resource-intensive facilities with little regard for their water and energy demands. From Stockholm's waste-heat recovery systems to zero-water cooling technologies, solutions exist. Yet India continues to trade away land, water and public resources with scant consideration for environmental sustainability or local communities.