The statements were issued hours after the Assam Police detained Doley in Guwahati on July 12 in connection with a criminal case registered at Bokakhat Police Station. According to report by The Hindu, Doley, the convenor of the Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Protection Committee (GKLHRPC) and a leading face of the agitation against a proposed luxury hotel project near Kaziranga National Park, was detained under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Police officials stated that he was being questioned in connection with a case registered on June 29 before being handed over to Bokakhat Police for further legal proceedings, although they did not disclose the specific incident leading to the FIR. As per Hindustan Times, Doley, however, alleged that no arrest warrant was shown to him during the operation, asking, “What kind of democracy is this if we are not allowed to raise the voice of the people?“.

Forum for Social Harmony calls arrest an attack on democratic rights

The Forum for Social Harmony characterised Doley’s arrest as “an attack on democratic rights”, alleging that the Assam government had deployed the police machinery to suppress a legitimate people’s movement centred on land rights, livelihood protection and environmental justice. The organisation said the arrest was deeply alarming because it followed a prolonged and peaceful campaign by local farmers, indigenous communities and several people’s organisations opposing the proposed luxury hotel project at Engle (Inglay) Pathar in Kaziranga.

According to the Forum, the government’s response has not been to engage with the concerns raised by affected communities but to repeatedly invoke criminal law against movement leaders. It alleged that the filing of one criminal case after another reflects a “dangerous trend” of shrinking democratic space, where constitutionally protected rights to dissent and freedom of expression are increasingly curtailed through criminal prosecution and police action.

The statement further asserted that the demands of working people seeking to protect their land, livelihoods and environment cannot be silenced through what it described as police repression and fabricated criminal cases. It argued that criminalising those participating in public-interest movements undermines democratic institutions and weakens citizens’ ability to peacefully challenge state policies affecting their lives.

Calling for immediate action, the Forum demanded Doley’s unconditional release, withdrawal of all false and politically motivated cases against him and others associated with the Kaziranga movement, and an end to what it termed the state’s politically motivated repression of protesters. It also appealed to democratic, secular and progressive organisations, farmers’ and workers’ unions, students’ organisations, youth groups, human rights defenders and concerned citizens across Assam to unite in protest against what it described as anti-democratic state action.

The complete statement (translated) is as follows:

PRESS STATEMENT

The Arrest of Pranab Doley is an Attack on Democratic Rights: Forum for Social Harmony

The Forum for Social Harmony strongly condemns the arrest of Pranab Doley, one of the key leaders of the Kaziranga people’s movement, by the Assam Police on 12 July. This attempt by the state government to use the police to suppress a democratic movement fighting for land rights, livelihood, and environmental protection is deeply alarming.

For a long time, local farmers, residents, and various people’s organisations have been protesting against the proposed luxury hotel project at Engle Pathar in Kaziranga. The filing of one criminal case after another and the arrest of leaders of this public-interest movement reflect a dangerous trend of curtailing the democratic right to dissent and freedom of expression.

The Forum firmly states that the legitimate demands of working people to protect their land and livelihoods cannot be silenced through police repression and fabricated criminal cases. This politics of criminalising people’s movements must come to an end.

The Forum for Social Harmony demands the immediate and unconditional release of Pranab Doley, the withdrawal of all false and politically motivated cases filed against him and all others associated with the movement, and an end to the ongoing politically motivated repression against the protesters.

The Forum also calls upon all democratic, secular and progressive forces, farmers’ and workers’ organisations, human rights groups, students’ and youth organisations, and all conscious citizens of the state to unite in protest against these anti-democratic actions.

Harkumar Goswami

Convener

Forum for Social Harmony

12 July 2026

AMSU and AIKMS allege arrests reflect ‘bulldozer politics’ serving corporate interests

In a more expansive joint statement, the Asom Mojuri Shramik Union (AMSU) and the All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS) broadened the issue beyond Doley’s arrest, arguing that it reflects a systematic pattern of criminalising people’s movements across Assam. The organisations also condemned the arrest of Adit Chandra Rabha, advisor to the Borduar Tea Estate Land Pattas Demand Committee and spokesperson of the Nikhil Rabha National Council, contending that both arrests form part of an escalating crackdown on leaders defending land rights.

The organisations argued that these were not isolated incidents but examples of a recurring strategy employed whenever communities organise to defend their rights over land, forests, water and livelihoods. According to the statement, the government increasingly responds to such mobilisations by registering criminal cases under various penal provisions and imprisoning movement leaders through police action. Describing the practice as a serious assault on democratic rights, AMSU and AIKMS alleged that fabricated criminal cases have become a routine instrument for intimidating grassroots movements and weakening public resistance.

One of the central themes of the statement is its critique of what the organisations describe as “bulldozer politics.” They argued that the policy, which they say began with demolitions and evictions in Gorukhuti, has now evolved into a broader political and economic project extending across Assam. According to the organisations, bulldozer politics is not merely about the demolition of homes but about systematically clearing the path for corporate investment by undermining the land, livelihood and labour rights of working people. They alleged that wherever large corporate interests are involved—whether in forced evictions, land acquisition, luxury tourism projects or state control over forests and agricultural land—the state machinery consistently aligns itself with corporate capital rather than affected communities.

Expanding on this argument, AMSU and AIKMS linked Doley’s arrest to several ongoing struggles across Assam. They pointed to the Borduar land rights movement, the continuing resistance against the proposed luxury hotel project in Kaziranga, and the protests against the forced eviction of thousands of tea garden workers in Dolu for the construction of an airport. Rather than viewing these as separate conflicts, the organisations argued that together they demonstrate a consistent pattern in which communities defending their land and livelihoods are met with police action instead of dialogue, consultation or justice.

The statement further alleged that the arrests of Doley and Rabha reveal that the government’s objective extends beyond prosecuting two individuals. Instead, it argued, the broader aim is to silence democratic movements through fear and dismantle organised resistance against what it described as the corporate takeover of land and natural resources. According to the organisations, this assault is not confined to land rights activists but affects tea garden workers, construction workers, gig workers, contract labourers, street vendors and small farmers, all of whom they claim are experiencing the consequences of the same corporate-oriented governance model. While labour protections are weakened, they alleged, those demanding constitutional and labour rights increasingly face criminalisation.

Reaffirming solidarity among workers and peasants across divisions of nationality, religion, language and caste, AMSU and AIKMS said only a united movement of workers, farmers and the toiling masses could effectively resist such policies. The organisations demanded the immediate and unconditional release of both Doley and Rabha, withdrawal of all politically motivated cases against participants in democratic movements, an end to the repression of protests and organising, and the abandonment of policies facilitating forced eviction, land acquisition and erosion of people’s rights in favour of corporate interests.

The complete statement (translated) is as follows:

PRESS STATEMENT

Demand for the Immediate and Unconditional Release of Land Rights Activist Pranab Doley and Nikhil Rabha National Council Spokesperson Adit Chandra Rabha

Escalating repression and arrests are part of a bulldozer politics serving corporate interests: Jason Mojuri Shramik Union and All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS)

Guwahati, July 12: The Central Committee of the Asom Mojuri Shramikv Union (AMSU) and the State Unit of All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS) has strongly condemned the arrest of Pranab Doley, a leader of the Land Rights Movement and one of the key organisers of the Kaziranga resistance movement, and Adit Chandra Rabha, advisor to the Borduar Tea Estate Land Pattas Demand Committee in Rabha Hasong, a prominent leader of Assam’s land rights movement, and spokesperson of the Nikhil Rabha National Council. The two organisations have demanded their immediate and unconditional release.

In a joint statement issued today, the organisations said:

“These arrests are not isolated incidents. Whenever people organise themselves to defend their rights over land, livelihood, forests and water, the government increasingly resorts to registering criminal cases under various penal provisions and imprisoning movement leaders through police action. Using fabricated cases to intimidate democratic movements and weaken popular resistance has become a routine strategy of the government. This is a serious assault on democratic rights.

The bulldozer policy that began in Gorukhuti has now been extended across Assam. This bulldozer politics is not merely about demolishing homes; it is a political project aimed at clearing the way for corporate capital by undermining the rights of working people. Wherever large corporate interests are involved, the state machinery consistently stands with capital against the people. Whether it is forced eviction, land acquisition, luxury tourism projects, or state control over forests and agricultural land, the same pattern is evident everywhere.”

The statement further observed:

“Be it the land struggle in Borduar, the ongoing movement against the proposed luxury hotel project in Kaziranga, or the resistance against the forced eviction of thousands of tea garden workers at Dolu in the name of constructing an airport, the government’s response has been repression instead of dialogue and justice. The legal and mass resistance initiated by the workers of Dolu continues even today. These struggles clearly demonstrate that the government is systematically attacking land rights, livelihood, and labour rights in the interests of corporate capital.

The arrests of Adit Chandra Rabha and Pranab Doley make it clear that the government’s target is not merely two individuals; its real objective is to silence all democratic people’s movements through fear and to crush resistance against corporate plunder.

This assault is not confined to land movements alone. Tea garden workers, construction workers, gig workers, contract workers, small farmers and street vendors are all victims of the same policy. On the one hand, labour rights are being systematically eroded; on the other, those who demand their rights are being criminalised. Both are integral parts of the same corporate-oriented model of governance.”

The Asom Mojuri Shramik Union and the All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS) reaffirmed that this assault can only be resisted through the united struggle of all working people across divisions of nationality, religion, language and caste.

They stated that only the unity of workers, peasants and the toiling masses can defeat the politics of division.

The organisations demand:

Immediate and unconditional release of Pranab Doley and Adit Chandra Rabha.

Withdrawal of all politically motivated cases filed against leaders and participants of democratic people’s movements.

An end to the ongoing repression of democratic protests and the right to organise.

Immediate abandonment of policies of forced eviction, land acquisition, and the erosion of people’s rights in the interests of corporate capital.

Issued by:

Asom Mojuri Shramik Union (AMSU), Central Committee

All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS), Assam State Commitee

Signed by:

Mrinal Kanti Som

Debajit Choudhury

Bhumi Adhikar Andolan raises concerns over legality of arrest, constitutional safeguards

The Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA) issued the most detailed statement, placing Doley’s arrest within the broader framework of indigenous rights, constitutional protections and the increasing criminalisation of land rights defenders across India. Condemning the arrest of what it described as an “indigenous rights defender,” the organisation alleged that around 100 police personnel surrounded the house in Guwahati where Doley was staying during the early hours of July 12.

According to BAA, those present at the residence questioned the police about the legal basis for the operation and asked to see an arrest warrant. The organisation claimed that no warrant was produced during the arrest and that police merely informed those present that Doley was being arrested in connection with a criminal complaint registered at Bokakhat Police Station on June 29.

The organisation also listed the numerous Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) provisions under which the case has reportedly been registered, including Sections 61(2), 191(2), 191(3), 190, 329(3), 324(2), 221, 132, 121, 121(1), 121(2), 351(3), 74, 326(g) and 62, highlighting what it suggested was the extensive criminal framework invoked against a leader of a public movement.

BAA described Doley as one of the foremost leaders of the people’s struggle against the proposed Hyatt luxury hotel project at Inglay Pathar on the fringes of Kaziranga National Park. It said the movement has united indigenous communities, Adivasi farmers and local residents who oppose what they view as the diversion of community land for corporate tourism. According to the organisation, protesters have consistently argued that the project threatens farming livelihoods, undermines indigenous land rights and advances a model of development that privileges corporate interests over ecological sustainability and community welfare.

The organisation further argued that communities living around Kaziranga have, for years, resisted attempts to convert ecologically sensitive landscapes into spaces for luxury tourism while those who have historically lived in and protected these areas continue to face displacement, restrictions and criminalisation. It said the movement has consistently demanded transparency in decision-making, recognition of community land rights, ecological justice and adherence to constitutional guarantees protecting indigenous peoples.

Calling the arrest far more than an isolated law-and-order action, BAA alleged that it reflects a growing national pattern of targeting individuals resisting land grabs, forced displacement and the corporate takeover of forests, commons and indigenous territories. According to the organisation, such actions weaken democratic institutions by attempting to silence legitimate dissent through criminal prosecution.

Besides demanding Doley’s immediate release and withdrawal of all allegedly false and politically motivated cases, BAA also called for full adherence to constitutional and legal safeguards, including immediate access to legal counsel and family members, protection from custodial violence or harassment, and an independent and transparent review of the proposed Hyatt hotel project and all actions taken against affected communities. It further appealed to democratic organisations, trade unions, environmental groups, lawyers, journalists, farmers’ organisations, civil liberties groups and citizens across the country to stand in solidarity with the people of Kaziranga, asserting that the defence of land, forests, livelihoods and indigenous rights is a democratic and constitutional struggle—not a crime.

The complete statement is as follows:

Statement by Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA)

Condemn the Arrest of Indigenous Rights Defender Pranab Doley; Release Him Immediately

Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA) strongly condemns the arrest of Pranab Doley, an indigenous peoples’ leader from Kaziranga, Assam, by the Assam Police from Guwahati on 12 July 2026.

According to information received, around 100 police personnel surrounded the house where Pranab Doley was staying in Guwahati from the early hours of the morning. Those present reportedly questioned the police regarding the legal basis of the operation and stated that no arrest warrant was produced at the time of arrest. The police informed them that the arrest was in connection with a criminal complaint registered on 29 June 2026 at Bokakhat Police Station.

We understand that the case has been registered under the provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including Sections 61(2), 191(2), 191(3), 190, 329(3), 324(2), 221, 132, 121, 121(1), 121(2), 351(3), 74, 326(g) and 62.

Pranab Doley has been one of the foremost leaders of the people’s struggle against the proposed Hyatt luxury hotel project at Inglay Pathar (Inle Pothar) on the fringes of Kaziranga National Park. The movement has brought together indigenous communities, Adivasi farmers and local residents who have consistently opposed the diversion of land for corporate tourism projects. They have argued that the proposed project threatens the livelihoods of farming families, undermines the rights of indigenous communities and promotes a model of development that prioritises corporate interests over people and the environment.

For the past several years, the people of Kaziranga have raised their voices against attempts to convert ecologically sensitive landscapes into spaces for luxury tourism while communities that have lived in and protected these landscapes continue to face displacement, restrictions and criminalisation. The movement has consistently demanded transparency, protection of community land rights, ecological justice and respect for constitutional guarantees.

The arrest of Pranab Doley is not an isolated incident. It comes in the context of an intensifying pattern of criminalising those who resist land grabs, forced displacement and the corporate takeover of forests, commons and indigenous territories. Such actions weaken democratic institutions and seek to silence legitimate dissent.

Bhumi Adhikar Andolan demands:

* Immediate release of Pranab Doley.

* Withdrawal of all false and politically motivated cases against him and other activists associated with the Kaziranga movement.

* Full adherence to constitutional and legal safeguards, including immediate access to legal counsel and family members.

* Protection from custodial violence and any form of harassment.

* An independent and transparent review of the proposed Hyatt hotel project and all actions taken against the affected communities.

We call upon democratic organisations, people’s movements, civil liberties groups, trade unions, farmers’ organisations, environmental groups, lawyers, journalists and all concerned citizens across the country to stand in solidarity with the people of Kaziranga and demand the immediate release of Pranab Doley.

The struggle to defend land, forests, livelihoods and the rights of indigenous peoples is a democratic and constitutional struggle—not a crime. Attempts to silence those who resist corporate land grabs will only strengthen the resolve of people’s movements across the country.

Release Pranab Doley immediately.

Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA)

12 July 2026

Arrest follows protests against Kaziranga luxury hotel project

Doley’s arrest comes against the backdrop of an intensifying campaign against the proposed construction of luxury hotels on the fringes of Kaziranga National Park, a project that has triggered sustained opposition from indigenous communities, farmers and local residents over concerns relating to displacement, ecological degradation and the diversion of community land.

According to The Indian Express, Doley, 40, was detained by a team of Dispur Police from the Sundarpur area of Guwahati on July 12 in connection with a case registered at Bokakhat Police Station in Golaghat district. Police officials stated that he was detained under several provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) relating to offences including criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly, rioting, criminal trespass, voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from discharging official duties, obstruction of public servants and criminal intimidation. Officials said the investigating officer from Bokakhat was travelling to Guwahati to take custody of Doley for further legal proceedings but did not disclose the specific incident that led to the registration of the FIR.

As per the report of Hindustan Times, the case is believed to be linked to confrontations between local protesters and the police during demonstrations held near Hatikhuli approximately two weeks earlier, where residents had protested against the proposed tourism project. However, the police have not officially confirmed whether those protests directly form the basis of the criminal case.

Doley has emerged as one of the most recognisable faces of the resistance against the proposed luxury hotel developments around Kaziranga. As the convenor of the Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Protection Committee (GKLHRPC), he has led protests highlighting what local communities describe as the ecological and social consequences of commercial tourism projects in the region. Protesters have consistently argued that such developments threaten wildlife corridors, agricultural land and the livelihoods of indigenous and Adivasi communities while advancing corporate interests at the expense of local populations. Doley has also previously accused authorities of violating the rights of communities living around Kaziranga in the name of conservation and anti-poaching operations.

Bhumi Adhikar Joutha Sangram Samiti alleges pattern of targeting land rights leaders

Echoing many of the concerns raised by the three organisations, the Bhumi Adhikar Joutha Sangram Samiti (Joint Action Committee for Land Rights) also condemned Doley’s arrest, alleging that the Assam government was systematically targeting leaders spearheading land rights movements across the state.

In a statement issued by advisor Shantanu Borthakur and conveners Gobinda Rabha, Krishna Gogoi and Subrata Talukdar, the committee alleged that Doley’s arrest was directly linked to his role in leading campaigns to protect the land rights of indigenous communities and opposing corporate-backed projects in Kaziranga. Referring to the recent arrest of Adit Chandra Rabha, advisor to the Borduar Bagan Bhumi Pattan Dabi Samiti and spokesperson of the Nikhil Rabha Jatiya Parishad, the committee argued that both arrests reflected a broader pattern of action against prominent leaders associated with Assam’s land rights movement.

“The only crime of Pranab Doley was that he joined the struggle to protect the land of 45 Adivasi families in Kaziranga and campaigned against large corporations,” the committee said, alleging that corporate interests were increasingly being advanced with the support of the state government while activists defending community rights were facing criminal prosecution.

Describing the arrests as part of a wider crackdown on democratic voices, the committee demanded Doley’s immediate release and urged the Assam government to end what it termed the harassment of land rights activists and those participating in democratic movements.

Opposition leaders question police action

The arrest also drew sharp criticism from opposition leaders, who questioned the government’s use of police action against those protesting state policies.

According to IE report, Assam Congress president and Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi described Doley’s detention as an attempt to silence voices critical of the government. Stating that citizens in a democracy have the right to oppose government policies, Gogoi argued that the police action exposed what he called the contradiction between the ruling BJP’s claims of protecting indigenous rights and its treatment of those raising concerns over land and livelihood.

Similarly, Raijor Dal president and Sivasagar MLA Akhil Gogoi accused the BJP-led government of imprisoning tribal leaders to protect the interests of corporate capital, alleging that those defending the rights of indigenous communities were increasingly being treated as criminals rather than citizens exercising their democratic rights.

The arrest has therefore triggered condemnation not only from organisations directly associated with the Kaziranga movement but also from labour unions, farmers’ organisations, indigenous rights groups, land rights collectives and opposition political leaders, all of whom have questioned the state’s response to sustained public protests over the proposed luxury tourism project. Together, the statements present the arrest as more than an isolated policing action, framing it instead as part of a broader debate over democratic dissent, constitutional rights, environmental justice, indigenous land rights and the increasing criminalisation of grassroots movements in Assam.

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The post ‘Attack on democratic rights’: Rights groups denounce Pranab Doley’s arrest appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Political economist, Parakala Prabhakar delivered the Father Stan Swamy Memorial Lecture, St. Patrick’s High School, Secunderabad July 11, 2026. Here is the full text of the lecture:

Dignitaries on the dais and my dear friends,

I felt sad, was moved to tears, when Father Stan Swamy died. There was a chapter on him in my book, The Crooked Timber of New India. The title of the chapter is ‘Who Killed Father Stan Swamy?’ You would have noticed that I asked, ‘who killed’ Stan Swamy’. I meant that he did not simply die. I meant that he was, indeed, killed.

Today I am not asking the same question. I am asking a different one: ‘Who is afraid of Stan Swamy?’ I further ask, ‘Why are they afraid of him?’

In April this year, I went to Bagaicha, Namkum, on the outskirts of Ranchi. I spent two days there. I delivered a lecture on the occasion of his Jayanthi. It was called ‘Stan Swamy Jayanthi Vimarsa.’

 Today I am here not to share my sorrow with you. I am here to celebrate the life of Father Stan Swamy, and together with you to draw inspiration from the values he stood for, and his work to uphold them.

I am grateful to the organisers for giving me an opportunity to speak on this occasion.

A Few Concerns

Before I proceed further, I would like to caution you all about a few things that worry me these days. Some of you might have come across these alarm bells. I say these cautionary words whenever I get an opportunity to address a gathering, big or small. Those who heard these few lines before should forgive me for repeating. I repeat them because I strongly feel that they are important, and bear repetition.

First caution. If some people in this gathering think that we can continue to hold this kind of meetings in future, I appeal to them to shed that delusion. Even now in many parts of the country it is becoming increasingly difficult to air our views freely, and without consequences. If things go the way they are going now, soon it will be impossible to impossible to hold such meetings.

Second. This year it is nearly certain that our beloved tricolour will fly on the Red Fort on our Independence Day. But come next year, I am not sure. Anyone here can guess the colour of the flag that is a likely to fly.

Third. Recently the Union Home Ministry has issued a circular. It makes the singing of all the six stanzas of Vandemataram, compulsory. It also specified that it should be sung before Jana Gana Mana. If the present drift continues unchecked, sooner than later, Jana Gana Mana could be gradually phased out. If the ten-hour marathon debate on Vandemataram in our Lok Sabha tells us anything, it is this.

Our Parliament does not discuss people’s issues any longer. It has no time for them. There has been no discussion on unemployment, price rise, situation in Manipur, rural distress in the country, falling exchange value of the rupee, operation Sindoor, Chinese occupation of large tracts of our territory, falling domestic investment, and many such urgent issues. But our Lok Sabha found time for a ten-hour marathon discussion on Vande Mataram.

If we let the present drift continue unchecked, these three dangerous possibilities would soon be realities.

There is one more danger in the making, the fourth. Recently the government has constituted a High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC). You have to read its terms of reference to understand its import and what it could do to our society. The repeated use of the term ‘illegal immigration’ is a giveaway of the present dispensation’s intentions behind embarking on an exercise like this.

Our Values

When I remember Father Stan Swamy and think of how we look at him and the regime looked at him, I am reminded of William Blake’s words:

A tree that moves some to tears is to others a green thing that stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.

We all share a set of values and ideals. The best expression of those values was given by Father Stan Swamy just before his arrest on October 8, 2020.

This is what he said: 

“Over the last two decades, I have identified myself with the Adivasi people and their struggle for a life of dignity and self-respect… In this process, I have clearly expressed my dissent over several policies and laws enacted by the government in light of the Indian Constitution. I have questioned the validity, legality, and justness of several steps taken by the government and the ruling class. If this makes me a ‘deshdrohi,’ then so be it. We are part of the process. In a way, I am happy to be part of this process. I am not a silent spectator, but part of the game and ready to pay the price, whatever it may be… I/we must be ready to face the consequences. I would just add that what is happening to me is not unique. Many activists, lawyers, writers, journalists, student leaders, poets, intellectuals, and others who stand for the rights of Adivasis, Dalits, and the marginalised and express their dissent to the ruling powers are being targeted. I am grateful to all who have stood in solidarity with me all these years.”

Let me take out the important words and expressions from what he said and make a list of them.

Adivasis; Dalits; the marginalised; ruling powers; struggle for a life of dignity and self-respect; dissent; solidarity; Indian Constitution; validity; legality; justness; deshdrohi; silent spectator; pay the price; face the consequences.

Situation in the Country 

Economy 

There are some stubbornly enduring features of the present dispensation in the economic domain. It is not able to shed them even well into its third consecutive term: Ad hoc-ism in policy making, reluctance to learn from past mistakes, denial of lived economic reality of the common people, massaging of data to present a rosy picture of the economy, believing its own propaganda (though it is initially meant for setting PR narratives), wrongly interpreting its electoral successes as an endorsement, if not an outcome, of its record of economic performance.

The government remains resolute in sticking to the denial mode. It takes little note of the economic slowdown, the tapering off of capital inflows into the country, flight of capital from India, decline in the domestic private investment despite reduction in corporate taxes, the much-hyped Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and the so-called ‘crowding in’ of public investment. The unorganised sector in the country is largely in decline or in stagnation is no concern to it. We all know that this is the sector that can give at least subsistence incomes to the vast majority of our people.

Instead, the present dispensation is spending time ideating on how to ‘add more momentum to the reforms journey’, ensure ‘ease of living’ and ‘ease of doing business’. For whom?

Evidently, for a few of its cronies.

Much of the credit offtake in the country is now for consumption. Problems such as rising cost of living especially for the poor and the marginalised, unacceptably high youth unemployment and unemployment among the educated do not matter to it. One of the high-profile economic policy makers is on record saying that it was not the lack of opportunities but lack of aspiration that kept our young people out of work.

Little did he realise that both the organised and unorganised sectors are unable to absorb the labour force. Rising economic inequality matters little to the dispensation. Its policy wonks even exhort us ‘not to lose sleep over inequality’.

The present dispensation lacks appetite for an honest review of its past initiatives and for course correction. That demonetisation has done little to serve any objective, assuming it had even one. It decimated thousands of small businesses and establishments in the unorganised sector. That ghastly experience offered no lessons to it. Even the after-thought sort of objective of reducing cash transactions in the economy remains unserved nearly eight years after the measure. One glance at the disaggregated data of UPI transactions is enough to tell us that.

The dispensation is tone deaf to the plight of the poor and the marginalised.

That damage itself is difficult to undo. But what accompanied that damage is more serious: the institutional compromise that occurred and continues even today. The foremost is the compromise of our economic data infrastructure. Our national accounts estimates have become questionable. They are contestable not merely from the methodological and base-year points of view. Their integrity in collection, lazy erroneous proxying, reporting, analysing and computing have come under a cloud.

Our statistical architecture is now undependable. It is recognised as untrustworthy by global financial agencies. The Planning Commission was perhaps oversized and might not have been the most efficient institution. But at least it did not give the government of the day inaccurate data tailored to suit its political needs. Its replacement, the NITI Aayog, is yet to do anything worthwhile in the last twelve years other than that.

The Reserve Bank of India has been bleeding billions of dollars to protect the rupee’s exchange rate vis-a-vis the US dollar. However, its intervention could only prevent a sudden steep fall but not arrest the currency’s steep slide. Rupee continues to reach newer lows every trading day. The government does not seem to have come to grips with the fundamental problems plaguing the rupee and figure out why it is the worst performing Asian currency today. It is in denial. It wants to look for reasons only in the global headwinds.

The present dispensation is genetically unfit to getting the economy right. Its sole preoccupation is to recast the polity in a majoritarian mould. It has no economic project for the country. Its sole aim seems to be the enrichment of a few of its cronies.

It would be a mistake to think that the last twelve years have been bad for the country’s economic performance alone.

The present dispensation is fundamentally altering the political society of the country. That is equally a serious problem.

Polity: Dismantling Secular, Inclusive India

The present dispensation is fiendishly working to dismantle the idea of India as a secular, plural, and federal state that pledged itself to delivering liberty, equality, justice and fraternity to its people and to foster a humane society. The idea of India embedded in our 1947 tryst with destiny and the political compact enshrined in our 1950 constitution are now in mortal danger.

The secular, plural, democratic conception of India has been the target of unrelenting assaults from this dispensation and several other past-worshipping obscurantist platforms. They have been openly and doggedly championing an unequal social order. Their project is to seek India’s future in its past; to recover from that imaginary past a fabricated pristine glory; to turn the secular, democratic Republic into a culturally, linguistically, religiously homogenized nation. The idea that Indian civilization is a synthesis, and a palimpsest, is abhorrent to them. Their project’s notion of India seeks to obliterate the rich diversity of cultures, languages, lifestyles, eating habits, sartorial practices, ways of worship and syncretism that our country is blessed with.

A flattened India is their notion of a ‘civilizational’ state. That is the goal of the current dispensation. 

Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is but one key element in a grand project that seeks to assert exclusive Hindu ownership of the Indian nation, to make that Hindu-owned nation the sole rightful resident in the territory of the Indian state – and turn it into a Hindu nation-state, a Hindu Rashtra. It seeks to redefine the country’s identity as ‘Hindu nation-state’. In that configuration ‘savarna’ is deliberately muted and made illegible for the time being for tactical reasons.

Eventually, when constraints are broken, it would be unveiled as a full-blooded, unapologetic, wall to wall ‘savarna Hindu Rashtra’. Make no mistake.

Bloodless Political Genocide 

When we became a Republic, our founding parents made it a home for everyone who lived in its territory. Membership of the Republic, and citizenship, were not predicated on religion, caste, gender, language, culture, region of residence, colour, economic status, educational qualifications and such other attributes. Everyone who chose India as their land of residence was a citizen, also a voter, and thus a full-fledged member of the country’s political society. Denominational attributes did not privilege one or the other as rightful owners of the nation. Everybody was. Janmabhumi was the sole criterion. We did not entertain Punyabhumi as a criterion for our citizenship or membership of our political society.

Europe went through a different experience when nation states were formed. There were people who rightfully belonged and those who were ‘others’ or minorities. That was the basis of European nation-states. There were majorities and minorities. Not political, but on the basis of birth, race, religion, language, culture. Minorities’ residence was predicated on their becoming tolerable to the majorities. European countries, and countries which adopted that model of building their nation-states, either subjugated minorities, pushed them out of their territories, or even exterminated them. Beginning from the cleansing of the Iberian peninsula in the mid and late 15^th century until the ethnic cleansing that Israel carries out today, history is witness to many bloody attempts to forge homogenized nations. Nazi gas chambers were the most dastardly consequence of this project.

But in India our founding parents and freedom fighters chose a different path. They designed our collective life in a way that the state gave room for everyone, despite their diversity, to live together and thrive.

But ideologies in India that draw their inspiration from the inhumane European concept of nation-owned state want our Republic too to be turned into a state, owned by one nation – the Hindu nation. The present dispensation belongs to that ideological stable. In its conception of a Republic, the ‘others’ needed to be assimilated to the point of obliterating their respective identities, pushed out of the territory of the nation-state, or exterminated through genocide.

Remember, the ideological formulation articulated by the current ruling dispensation a few years ago? It said that there are three ways to deal with the minorities: Tiraskar (Rejection), Puraskar (Appeasement), Samskar (Reform and assimilation).

Initially when the country’s secular consensus was strong, it said that it was not practical to reject a large minority. So Tiraskar was ruled out then. But at the same time, it said, that appeasement or Puraskar was not an ideal option. It wanted to work on the gradual assimilation of minorities, Samskar, into the Hindu fold to the extent that their religious identity and other markers are completely obliterated. You may have heard, expressions from some majoritarians, like, ‘that individual is a Christian, but a good person; that person is a Muslim, but a good individual.’ Meaning, despite being a Christian or a Muslim, ‘they are like us and therefore, tolerable and acceptable.’ That is the harmless looking beginning to the formulation that others had to become ‘tolerable’ and ‘acceptable’ to earn their right to be part of India.

After a few years of unsuccessful dabbling in that experiment, the current dispensation’s ideology finally brought back the initially discarded option on to the top of its political agenda: Rejection, Tiraskar. With the weakening of the secular consensus, or even its breakdown, Rejection has now morphed into Ejection. Ejection from the country’s political society.

Remember, what Shri LK Advani used to say with reference to Muslim minority? He said, ‘with you, without you, in spite of you’. Meaning, ‘if they come along, with them; if they don’t, without them; and if they oppose, in spite of them’ That is a pointer to exclusion of minorities if they do not play along and assimilate or accept an unequal and subordinate place in the country’s political, economic and social life. Lynchings, bulldozing of houses, vandalizing churches on Christmas Eve are physical expressions of these formulations.

Today, look at the political reality in our country. For the first time in the history of independent India, the union council of ministers has no representative from either the Muslim or the Christian minority community. A few weeks ago, even the token presence of a Christian minority presence in the union ministry was dispensed with. The ministry is now composed exclusively of persons from the so-called Indic religions. The task of exclusion in the domain of political representation in the executive is more or less accomplished.

But what could be done about the political society? In the present-day India, both the pushing out and physical extermination of unassimilated minorities are politically impractical.

However, extermination of a political kind of the others is possible.

Instead of exterminating the citizen, citizenship could be exterminated. The ongoing SIR is the weapon forged for that kind of extermination. It exterminates citizenship of those unwanted, impure elements by exterminating their franchise. It is clear that without franchise, citizenship is hollow, without substance. Disenfranchisement hollows out citizenship.

Therefore, SIR is nothing but a bloodless political genocide. It exterminates citizenship, pushes people out of the political society, makes people stateless even as they continue to live within the borders of the Indian state. What CAA-NRC could not do, SIR is tasked to accomplish.

The idea of India as a state-nation (in contradistinction to a nation-state) that is home to diverse peoples, cultures, languages and religions is being dismantled at a fiendish pace.

Stan Swamy’s words once again 

This is the place where we need to recall the key words that I listed out from the statement made by Father Stan Swamy just before he was taken into custody on 8 October 2020.

Let me utter those words once again here:

Adivasis; Dalits; the marginalised; ruling powers; struggle for a life of dignity and self-respect; dissent; solidarity; Indian Constitution; validity; legality; justness; deshdrohi; silent spectator; pay the price; face the consequences.

Many studies have already clearly established that it is the Adivasis, the Dalits, the marginalized sections and specifically women among them who are being systematically targeted for deletion in the ongoing process of SIR.

Father Stan Swamy would have stood for them.

Today many in both the rural and urban India are battling for a life of dignity and self-respect.

Father Stan Swamy would have helped them wage their battles.

He would have given them the much-needed solidarity.

Our country’s social compact of secularism, plurality, federalism, diversity, justice, fraternity, equality and liberty are in mortal danger today.

Fr Stan Swamy would not have been a silent spectator in the face of an onslaught on these core values of our Constitution.

He would have risked being called a Deshdrohi and spoken out for them.

He was already called that. He would not have minded being called a Deshdrohi a thousand times over, and pay the price, if he were to express his dissent and face the consequences.

Whatever they might be.

I am sure, he would want us to do that.

Father Stan Swamy did not make noise. He was quietly working in the remote and neglected parts of the country.

The current dispensation was afraid of a frail, unwell, octogenarian.

That is because he personified all the values that are needed for our country, that are dear to us but are inimical to the project of the powers that be in Delhi.

Thank you for your attention.

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The post Who is afraid of Stan Swamy? And why? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As per the report of LiveLaw, a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta, hearing Sabitri Dey @ Swasthi Dey v. Union of India and connected matters, allowed all 27 appeals and remanded them to the concerned Foreigners Tribunals for fresh consideration. Although the detailed judgment is yet to be uploaded, the Bench made it unequivocally clear that the issue of citizenship “occupies a field of high constitutional and legal significance” and therefore demands a process that satisfies not only the requirements of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, but also the constitutional mandate of fairness under Articles 14 and 21.

Importantly, as LiveLaw reported, the Court did not dilute the statutory burden imposed by Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, reiterating that the obligation to establish Indian citizenship continues to rest on the proceedee. At the same time, however, it drew a critical constitutional distinction: the existence of a reverse burden does not absolve adjudicating authorities from ensuring that the process through which citizenship is determined is fair, lawful and reasonable.

“At the same time, the determination of such status must be made through a process which is fair, lawful and reasonable. The statutory burden under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946 remains fully applicable,” the Court observed, reported LiveLaw.

While acknowledging the State’s legitimate and compelling interest in preventing persons not legally entitled to Indian citizenship from securing it through false claims or abuse of process, the Bench cautioned that this objective cannot be pursued at the expense of procedural fairness. In one of the order’s most significant observations, the Court declared that “the determination of such status must be made through a process which is fair, lawful and reasonable,” thereby reaffirming that constitutional guarantees continue to operate even within the exceptional framework of the Foreigners Act.

The Court was careful to clarify that it had expressed no opinion on whether any of the appellants were, in fact, Indian citizens. Nor did it examine the genuineness, admissibility or sufficiency of the documents relied upon by them. Those issues, it held, must be independently evaluated by the concerned Foreigners Tribunals upon remand, uninfluenced by the earlier opinions of either the Tribunals or the Gauhati High Court.

“We have not examined the merits of the claims of citizenship by the appellants or expressed any opinion on the genuineness, admissibility, relevance or sufficiency of any document relied upon by them. Those questions must be decided by the concerned Tribunal independently,” the Court said.

Equally significant was the Bench’s clarification that the remand should not be treated as conferring any equitable advantage upon the appellants. Rather, the purpose of setting aside the earlier decisions was to ensure that a declaration carrying consequences as severe as detention, disenfranchisement, exclusion from citizenship records and possible deportation follows only from an adjudication that satisfies the constitutional standards of fairness.

“The concerned Tribunals shall decide the cases afresh and uninfluenced by any of the observations made by the High Court or by the Tribunals in the earlier opinions,” the Court directed.

Background of the case

The appeals arose from ex parte proceedings in which the Gauhati High Court had upheld the Foreigners Tribunals’ declarations after recording that the proceedees had failed to appear despite service of notice and had produced neither pleadings nor evidence to substantiate their claims of Indian citizenship. The High Court had held that while Foreigners Tribunal proceedings cannot be reduced to a purely mechanical exercise, opportunities to establish citizenship cannot be extended indefinitely. Relying upon Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, it reiterated that the burden of proving citizenship remains entirely with the proceedee and does not shift merely because the proceedings are conducted ex parte. In the absence of any evidence from the petitioners, the High Court concluded that the Tribunals were justified in answering the references against them.

Why this is significant

This order is a crucial reaffirmation in recent years that due process is not displaced by Section 9 of the Foreigners Act. While earlier decisions, including Sarbananda Sonowal and Rahim Ali @ Abdur Rahim, addressed the burden of proof and appreciation of documentary evidence, Sabitri Dey goes a step further by explicitly holding that the constitutional requirement of a “fair, lawful and reasonable” process governs citizenship adjudication itself. In doing so, the Court reinforces that citizenship cannot be determined merely through procedural default or rigid evidentiary formalism, but through an adjudicatory process that meets constitutional standards of justice. For thousands facing proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals in Assam, this represents an important constitutional safeguard, even as the reverse burden under the Foreigners Act continues to remain intact.

Detailed reports of small errors costing people their citizenship may be read here and here.

The Supreme Court’s intervention is therefore significant not because it weakens the statutory framework governing citizenship determination, but because it insists that the framework itself must operate within constitutional limits. The order marks an important evolution in the Court’s citizenship jurisprudence, recognising that the reverse burden under Section 9 and the constitutional guarantee of due process are not mutually exclusive. Instead, it makes clear that while the burden to establish citizenship may remain with the individual, the adjudicatory process must nevertheless satisfy the minimum standards of natural justice, fairness and reasonableness expected of a constitutional democracy.

By emphasising that the constitutional mandate of fairness survives even within the specialised regime of the Foreigners Act, the Supreme Court has sent an important signal that citizenship adjudication cannot be driven solely by technical compliance with statutory provisions. The order is therefore likely to serve as an important precedent for future proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals and constitutional courts, reaffirming that while the State has a legitimate interest in identifying illegal migrants, the determination of foreigner status must always be preceded by a process that is fair, transparent and constitutionally compliant.

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From Despair to Dignity: How CJP helped Elachan Bibi win back her identity, prove her citizenship

The post SC remands 27 citizenship cases, reaffirms constitutional fairness appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a scathing comment on what the Election Commission of India (ECI) has become today, Justice Lokur said it has become Imperium in Imperio (a power within a power). Nobody can question it. Article 324 was not intended to give blanket power to the Election Commission. That is we have the Representation of the People Act and the guidelines under Article 327 of the Constitution:  once you have a field that is occupied by law, fine — you have to go by that law.

Justice Madan Lokur

Justice Madan Bhimrao Lokur Justice served as a Judge of the Supreme Court of India from June 4, 2012 to December 30, 2018. He was speaking at a conclave on ‘One Nation-One Election, Federalism and Citizenship’, organised at the Constitution Club in Delhi. The conclave was organised jointly by the Constitutional Conduct Group and the Group on Federalism & Elections.

Also at the conclave were former Home Secretary Gopal Pillai, former Chief Election Commissioner S. Y. Quraishi, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, former chairman of the Law Commission of India Justice A. P. Shah, political scientist Niraja Jayal, and transparency advocate Anjali Bhardwaj, among others.

Justice Lokur speaking on the occasion said:

First, I would like to deal with the issue of the controversy that we are facing right now, which was adverted to by Ashok Lavasa (former Election Commissioner)— the passport versus the citizen. If I have an Indian passport, am I a citizen of India? Am I recognised as a citizen of India? We have been told by the Ministry of External Affairs, in a press conference, that the passport is nothing but a travel document — that it does not mean you are a citizen of India just because you have a passport. Therefore, I had a look at the Passports Act of 1967. And I will read to you the Preamble to the Act, and then come to some other sections. The Preamble to the Act says that it is “an Act to provide for the issue of passports and travel documents, to regulate the departure from India of citizens of India and other persons,” and so on. So the Preamble itself makes a distinction — and so does the Act itself — between a passport and a travel document. A passport is defined in the Passports Act, and a travel document is also, separately, defined in the Passports Act.

Now, Parliament does not make laws using superfluous words, or words that have no meaning — I think that is a well-settled principle. So when the Passports Act talks about a passport, and separately talks about a travel document, it means that these are two separate documents. To say that a passport is nothing but a travel document is, I think, a complete misreading of the provisions of the Passports Act.

That is the first thing which I think should be clarified: since it is a complete misreading, a person who holds an Indian passport is a citizen of India. I think that should be very clear.

Now, look at it from the point of view of somebody from outside the country.

You go to an Embassy for a Visa because you want to travel abroad, and the officer there says: “I am giving this visa to you on the basis that you are a citizen of India, but your Ministry of External Affairs says that the document you are presenting to me is not a passport in that sense, and does not certify that you are a citizen of India. So, I am sorry, I can’t give you a visa!”

What happens then at such a time? Does it mean that all the Indians who have gone abroad — to Europe, to the United States, and so on — are persons who are not citizens of India, just because they have a passport? It doesn’t mean anything at all. The passport is effectively reduced to a ticket. Not even an airline ticket, but perhaps a bus ticket — something that entitles you to travel from one destination to another and nothing more.

Now, I think, with great respect to the officer in the Ministry, this is saying something which is totally contrary to the law, and totally contrary to the Constitution of India.

The third thing is what people have been saying — and they said so on TV.

This is that Section 20 of the Passports Act enables the Government of India to give a passport to a person who is not a citizen of India. Fair enough — it does. But how many people who are not citizens of India have actually been given passports of India? We don’t know. I will be surprised if there is anybody who has been given an Indian passport who is not a citizen of India and is admittedly a foreigner. So to quote Section 20 and what it enables is neither here nor there, because we don’t even have the facts. We don’t know how many such people have got passports, who those people are, or the circumstances in which such passports were given. We don’t know anything about this. So Section 20, at least on the evidence available today, is a dead letter.

Take something like the Bharat Ratna. It can be given to a foreign citizen. How many foreigners have actually got the Bharat Ratna? Just two — Nelson Mandela and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, that’s it. But we know them, and we know what their nationality is; we know they are citizens of different countries. Under Section 20, first of all, we don’t even know whether such a passport has been given; we don’t know who that person is; we don’t know the nationality or the citizenship of that person. So we are just talking about something which is hypothetical. I think even this submission — that, well, it can be given to a foreign national — is neither here nor there.

There has been a mention of citizenship by birth. Yes, the Constitution of India and the Citizenship Act do mention citizenship by birth. There has also been a reference to the recent judgment of the United States Supreme Court. By the way, the US Constitution talks about citizenship by birth — but the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 5, says that Congress can make a law with regard to citizenship. And the Constitution of India also says the same thing, and it is on that basis that the Citizenship Act has been framed. So perhaps that is what the President of the United States is looking at — the possibility of framing a law under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to do away with citizenship by birth. We have done it. We have done it — we have put in some conditions, some riders: one parent being a citizen of India, one parent not being an illegal immigrant. I don’t know what the United States Supreme Court would or will do.

The last point I want to make on this is something I think is very, very important, and that is that the Constitution of India gives certain fundamental rights only to citizens. Among the most important of these are the right to freedom of speech and expression, the right to travel and move to any place within India, the right to carry on any business, profession, occupation or activity. These are granted only to citizens; they are not granted to everybody else. Article 21, the right to life and personal liberty, is granted to everybody, whether you are a citizen or not. Article 14, the right to equality, is granted to everybody — it doesn’t matter whether you are a citizen of India or not.

But Article 19 is granted only to citizens of India.

So if a person is declared to be a person who is not a citizen of India — why? Because he or she does not satisfy the requirements of the Election Commission, and therefore is not able to vote, and therefore, under Article 326, is perhaps deemed not a citizen of India — then that person is not entitled to any of the fundamental rights under Article 19. Can you imagine that? Somebody takes away your fundamental right to freedom of speech. You go to the court and say, I am a citizen of India, and my fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression has been taken away. And the judge asks you: what proof do you have that you are a citizen of India? What is your answer? You don’t have a single document to show that you are a citizen of India. You have a passport — but the judge says, sorry, the passport is a travel document, it is not a document of citizenship.

So, in effect, all these persons who have not been allowed to vote, and are therefore held not to be citizens of India, and are perhaps stateless persons, have been deprived of a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed under Article 19. So you have these 27 lakh, or 22 lakh, or

6.5 crore persons — whatever the figure — roaming around the country without the fundamental right to freedom of speech, to movement, to expression, to carrying on any business or occupation, because they are not citizens.

So really, when we are looking at this controversy about citizenship and passports, or about citizenship per se, we are looking at something which is extremely serious and which requires considerable debate and discussion — not some press conference where a joint secretary says that just because you have a passport, it does not mean you are a citizen of India. It has very, very serious consequences, which must be debated.

The second thing I would like to mention is about the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, and the judgments that have been rendered recently by the Supreme Court in the last year or two.

I do not want to say anything about the judgment on the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner, because that judgment is still to be delivered. The only thing I would like to say is that this was debated in Parliament, and one of the suggestions given was that Parliament should appoint the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners. That was mentioned, it was discussed, but it was turned down. The reason given was that the Election Commission is going to decide who is elected to Parliament, so we must have a person who is totally impartial. The Constituent Assembly was very clear that the Election Commission should have nothing to do with the executive. But today we have been told that two-thirds of the members of the selection committee to select the Chief Election Commissioner are members of the executive — the Prime Minister and a Cabinet Minister. So what the Constituent Assembly postulated — that there should be a complete separation between the executive and the Election Commission — has been done away with. But beyond that, there is not much I would like to say, because the judgment should be delivered any time now.

The recent judgments of the Supreme Court, particularly the ADR judgment, recognise the right to vote as a constitutional right. Now, way back in 1950–52, in the N.P. Ponnuswami case, a six-judge bench of the Supreme Court said that the right to vote is nothing but a statutory right — it is there in the Representation of the People Act, it is a statutory right. But now, in a sense overruling that six-judge decision, the Supreme Court has consistently taken the view — and it has been reiterated in that ADR judgment — that it is a constitutional right. That is good. I am not saying it should not be a constitutional right — but it is a constitutional right, and therefore it is very important.

So you can’t take away a constitutional right of a person. Apart from Article 19 and so on, if you say that you can’t vote, you are taking away a constitutional right — and you can’t just take it away by saying, listen, you produce certain documents. That is where the idea of a rebuttable presumption comes in. The presumption is that I am a citizen of India.

Somebody has to say that, no, you are not a citizen of India. I don’t have to prove that I am a citizen of India. Whereas now, what has happened is that I have to prove that I am a citizen of India. So that rebuttable presumption has been inverted, and the burden has been cast upon me — someone says to me, you please prove that you are a citizen of India, and if you are able to prove it through the production of these documents, I’ll allow you to vote.

It is actually the other way around. The presumption is that anybody who is here is a citizen of India. I can have an objection and say, listen, I don’t think this person is a citizen of India — in which case I can rebut that presumption and prove it, to the satisfaction of the Election Commission that this person is not a citizen of India. So there is a distinction to be made between a rebuttable presumption and the existence of a presumption which can be rebutted. I think the Election Commission has, in the recent past, kind of overturned that burden of proof.

What is the consequence of that? The consequence is that something like 27 lakh people, perhaps, in West Bengal have been disenfranchised. I met one of the tribunal members last week — last Saturday. She told me that on average — there are 18 tribunals; 19 were constituted, but one member resigned, and I don’t know if a replacement has been appointed. Out of the 18 tribunals, the daily disposal is about 20 to 25 cases per tribunal. On a rough calculation, that comes to about 500 cases being decided per day. I don’t know how many working days there are, but try and imagine: if 500 cases are decided in a day, how much time will it take for 27, or 22, or 23 lakh cases to be decided? And then to say, listen, you need not vote in this election, you can vote in the next election — perhaps that person’s turn may not even come in the next election, since the rate of adjudication is at 500 or 600 cases a day.

I also think that one of the important points the Supreme Court has missed is the expression “reason to believe,” which is there in the Act — that you can have an SIR if you have reason to believe that there is something wrong in the electoral roll. What is that reason to believe?

The expression “reason to believe” has been interpreted a hundred times under the Income Tax Act. You have an assessment order; the income tax officer has reason to believe that you have some income which has escaped assessment; he has to give the reasons why he has come to that belief; that has to be seen by the Commissioner, and then a notice is issued to you for reassessment. The PMLA, which the Enforcement Directorate is using day in and day out, also has the expression “reason to believe” — there is reason to believe that you are guilty of money laundering, or that you have some income which you have not shown and which you have perhaps laundered. The Representation of the People Act — the 1950 Act — also talks about “reason to believe.” The Election Commission has reason to believe that the electoral roll has been wrongly prepared in any constituency. The Supreme Court has said that “any constituency” can mean the entire country. Fair enough. But the reason to believe must be there — and the reason to believe has not been specified in the judgment of the Supreme Court. So we don’t even know what the reason is. Questions have been raised: what is the reason that you have? The electoral roll was prepared in January, elections were held in January; in June you said, well, I have reason to believe that it has to be revised. What were the reasons? Nobody knows. And the reason is, well, I think it should be done.

The Constituent Assembly used an expression, in the context of the judiciary — Imperium in Imperio, a power within a power. That is what the Election Commission is becoming today: Imperium in Imperio. Nobody can question it. Article 324 was not intended to give blanket power to the Election Commission. That is why you had the Representation of the People Act; that is why you had Article 327, which gives certain guidelines. So if the field is occupied by law, fine — you have to go by that law. If the area is unoccupied, then Article 324 comes into the picture. The Supreme Court said as much in Mohinder Singh Gill’s case, and that has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in ADR. I don’t agree with the interpretation, but that is a separate point. I believe that if the field is occupied, you go by what the law says; if it is not occupied, you go by what Article 324 says. It is not that Article 324 can, in a sense, say: well, I don’t think the field is occupied — even though it is occupied, I don’t think it is, and therefore I will do what I feel like doing. That is where the Imperium in Imperio concept comes in with the Election Commission, and I am afraid that has been given to the Election Commission.

There were two more things, actually. One: Mr Ashok Lavasa mentioned the piecemeal revision of electoral rolls. If you look at the statute, the revision or updating of the electoral rolls is expected to be a continuous process. You are supposed to do it all the time, because births are taking place all the time, deaths are taking place all the time, migration is taking place all the time. So you have to keep doing it continuously — not every day, but maybe once in six months, once in three months, once in a year, whatever it is. And when you come to the conclusion that there is something wrong, that is when you exercise the power to have this SIR. That is the reason to believe — that my study, of something I was supposed to do on a regular basis, is what has given me the impression, the empirical evidence, that the roll is incorrect and needs a revision, and therefore I order an SIR.

It could not have happened between January and June 2025. It could not have happened throughout the country. To say that because there has been no revision for the last 20 years, therefore I am going to have an SIR, is not correct. It means that for the last 20 years you have not been doing your job. You should have been doing it. Why have you not done it? How about explaining that to the people of the country? And if you have been doing it, then there is no reason for you to revise the electoral rolls of the entire country. So this piecemeal argument is, I think, of considerable significance. It just shows that either the Election Commission has not been working, or it has on its own decided that whatever happened in the past is wrong, we want to correct it, and we are going to do it in a period of three or four months in Bihar, and maybe some shorter period elsewhere.

The last thing I want to say is about welfare benefits. You had the situation in Bihar, you had the situation in West Bengal — people whose names are not on the electoral roll are not entitled to benefits. It is said, well, if you file an appeal, it’s okay, we’ll consider it. But in some places

— in Bihar, that is what I read in the newspapers — they are being deprived of the benefits. So just imagine the consequence. First of all, you are deprived of a fundamental right that you have under Article 19. Then you are deprived of certain benefits that you are entitled to because of your poverty. So advantage is being taken of your poverty to deprive you of the benefits that you should get because of your poverty. And you can’t carry on any business, profession or occupation, because that right has been taken away — because you are not a citizen. So where do these people go?

So the point is that this entire controversy that has been raised with regard to citizenship, and with regard to the SIR, is something so serious that a couple of discussions here or there is not going to make a difference. It is time that the Supreme Court actually looked into it — not simply saying that, because the Election Commission has done it, and it has the power under 324, we hold 324 to be a plenary power, and so on and so forth.

Look beyond the law. What is the consequence of the law? What is the consequence of an action taken under the law?

This is my closing comment. Just two days ago, you had one judgment from the Bombay High Court, where a person was externed from Mumbai because he had said something about a Cabinet Minister, and a couple of other things — completely innocuous — and he said, I have a right to protest. The Commissioner of Police externed him from Mumbai. So he had to leave his residence, go out of Mumbai, and find a place to stay. I was wondering whether the externment order had been stayed by the Bombay High Court. Whatever the exact position — the newspaper report is not entirely clear on that — the fact is that for seven months he lived outside Mumbai. He was sharing a flat with somebody. His family was in Mumbai. His children were in Mumbai. His work was in Mumbai. His political activities were in Mumbai. He was not allowed to enter the city because of that externment order. And the Bombay High Court said the externment order was illegal, and quashed it. But nothing followed from that. It was just a simple quashing. I believe that is where accountability comes in. Shouldn’t the executive, the Commissioner of Police or whoever it was who passed that externment order, have been made to pay for it, by way of compensation to this person, or by some other method?

The second judgment is from the Delhi High Court. A father and a son were arrested by the police and beaten up. The father was released the same evening. The son was not released; the next morning, the son was found dead, hanging. And the defence given by the police was — is material for committing suicide so easily available in a police station, that you tell a person, okay, in case you want to commit suicide, here is the material available? The Delhi High Court held — and I think rightly

• that custodial death is still actionable, and it gave compensation to the family, for whatever it is worth. That is where accountability comes in
• that you have deprived a person of his life illegally, unconstitutionally, so compensate him for that.

The Bombay High Court, according to me, should have done it. The Delhi High Court has done it. And this entire controversy about the SIR

• not being able to vote, not having fundamental rights, not getting welfare benefits, and all that — somebody has to be held And I think we need to discuss that as well. Thank you.

Related:

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Not What the Court Decided: Re-reading the Bombay High Court’s passport judgment

Rejected as Voter, also denied a Passport? Here is how ‘New India’ deals with exclusion complaints under SIR: Former editor, Telegraph, R Rajagopal

The post Justice Madan Lokur: ‘Passport Reduced to a Bus Ticket’, ECI an “Empire within an Empire’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The UN communication points to reports showing that the Home Minister presented the electoral updates before Parliament using the policy formula “Detect, Delete and Deport”. The text also notes that senior leadership repeatedly used this framing, describing the SIR as a process to “‘purify’ electoral rolls of infiltrators”.

The joint letter was sent by Nicolas Levrat, Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; and Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. Operating under Human Rights Council mandates, the experts requested explanations from the Indian government regarding actions that may amount to “serious violations of multiple human rights obligations”.

The scope of the ‘Special Intensive Revision’

The inquiry by UN experts centres on the large geographic scale of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) voter roll update.  According to the details sent to the UN mandate holders, the ECI announced a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process on November 4, 2025. This administrative exercise covered nine states: Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. It also included three Union Territories: Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry. In total, the revision applied to 321 districts and 1,843 Assembly Constituencies.

This updating process, which concluded its second phase on December 4, 2025, followed an initial revision conducted in Bihar between June and September of the same year. The ECI stated that the program’s official goals were to ensure that “the names of all eligible citizens are included in the electoral roll,” that “no ineligible voter is included,” and to maintain full transparency when adding or removing names.

Reports sent to the UN indicate that approximately 52 million names were removed from the voter rolls across the 12 participating States and Union Territories. The UN experts noted that the preliminary update in Bihar had already “caused alarm over potential large-scale disenfranchisement and denationalization, particularly of Muslims and other minorities”.

Detailed reports and complaints sent to UN experts led up to this. After examining the on ground details of the allegations, the United Nations (UN) has contacted the Government of India regarding the recent voter roll updates through Special Intensive Revision (SIR). In a formal communication dated May 1, 2026, three UN Special Rapporteurs have raised serious questions concerning the potential systematic removal of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities from electoral registers, focusing particularly on Muslim voters and people of Bengali descent.

Impact in West Bengal and the Nandigram

The removal of names heavily affected West Bengal just before its state assembly elections took place on April 23 and 29, 2026. The UN communication notes that West Bengal was “particularly affected,” with a reported 9.1 million names removed from the state’s voter registers.

Individuals affected by the deletions reported being “wrongfully excluded despite having provided valid identification”. The communication states that “Muslim voters were reportedly disproportionately impacted by the SIR process”.

Data from specific local areas highlighted significant discrepancies. The UN mandate holders pointed to the constituency of Nandigram, where reports indicated that “allegedly 95 per cent of the deleted voters were Muslims, even though Muslims only make up 25 per cent of the constituency’s electorate”.

The affected voting population in Nandigram includes “men, women, and elderly citizens who are Indian nationals with valid identity documents”.

The communication also highlights that minor issues, such as “minor spelling inconsistencies in documents”—which are “reportedly common across India due to administrative challenges”—were used as the basis for removing voter names.

Additionally, the UN mandate holders noted concerns regarding the use of technology, specifically reports pointing to “the alleged use of an AI-driven system that flagged ‘irregularities’ in voter data”. The experts stated that using automated systems in this high-stakes context introduces “serious issues related to transparency, errors, and potential bias,” which risks removing valid voters and “undermining democratic fairness”.

Official statements and rhetoric

The UN communication connects the administrative actions to the broader political environment and public statements regarding minority communities. The Special Rapporteurs noted “discriminatory rhetoric by politicians and senior public figures of the Government in the context of the SIR exercise”.

The letters state that the public comments “appear to reflect and reinforce a pattern of discriminatory rhetoric directed at Muslim, Bengali, and other minority communities”.

The communication also cites public statements from senior government figures, including the Union Home Minister, who “publicly framed the deletion of voter names as targeting ‘illegal Bangladeshi immigrants'”. The UN letter states that this description “conflates legitimate Indian Muslim citizens with foreign nationals”.

The UN communication points to reports showing that the Home Minister presented the electoral updates before Parliament using the policy formula “Detect, Delete and Deport”. The text also notes that senior leadership repeatedly used this framing, describing the SIR as a process to “‘purify’ electoral rolls of infiltrators”.

The Special Rapporteurs warned that this phrasing “could amount to potential incitement to discrimination within the meaning of article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)”. This article prohibits the advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that leads to incitement, hostility, or discrimination.

The UN experts stated that this language functions to “construct Muslim citizens as presumptively foreign, criminal and undeserving of civic rights, without any individualized determination of their legal status”. Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief reiterated that religious groups “must not be instrumentalised to incite hatred and violence, including for electoral purposes or political gains”.

The UN concluded that basing a state-run voter update on the removal of a specific religious group “risks constituting, at minimum, an official endorsement of discriminatory attitudes toward Muslim citizens,” and could represent the “instrumentalisation of State administrative machinery for the purpose of political targeting of a religious minority”.

The appeals process and judicial timelines

The UN letter reviewed the legal avenues available to affected citizens and how tight deadlines impacted the outcomes. Voters originally sought recourse through the ECI and filed petitions for judicial review with the Supreme Court of India. On April 6, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to put a stay on the revision process.

On April 16, 2026, the Supreme Court utilised its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution. The Court ruled that removed voters in West Bengal could restore their names if their appeals were approved by appellate tribunals by the deadlines of April 21 and April 27, 2026. The ECI was directed to update supplementary lists for these individuals, but the Court specified that “those with pending appeals would not be allowed to vote”.

The UN experts expressed concern over the logistical challenges of this legal remedy. The revision exercise led to more than 3.4 million appeals. The UN observed that “the short timeframe and sheer scale of the appeals meant to be resolved before the deadlines set by the Court… appear to have led to the exclusion of millions of eligible citizens from the elections in West Bengal”. The pressure on tribunals to process millions of cases in a few days left many voters without a resolved appeal before the voting deadlines.

Alignment with international human rights law

The UN mandate holders evaluated these events against international treaties that India has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified on April 10, 1979, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), ratified on December 3, 1968.

The annex to the communication outlines these specific standards. Article 27 of the ICCPR states that ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities have the right “to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language”. The 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities similarly requires nations to protect minority identities and ensure their participation in public life without discrimination.

Furthermore, Article 25 of the ICCPR guarantees citizens the right to participate in public affairs and vote in periodic elections “without unreasonable restrictions” and without religious distinctions. The Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 25 (1996) states that voter registration processes must be facilitated, objective, reasonable, and non-discriminatory.

The UN expressed “grave concern that the SIR process of electoral rolls conducted by the ECI in West Bengal appears to have imposed conditions and procedural burdens that were neither reasonable nor proportionate, and which have disproportionately impacted Muslim citizens”. They noted that the tight timelines, the “opacity of the algorithmic methodology employed,” and the barriers faced by economically and linguistically vulnerable voters combined to form unreasonable restrictions on voting rights.

Specific questions put forward by the UN

The communication asks the Indian Government to provide detailed observations on seven specific points:

“1. Please provide any additional information and any comment you may have on the above-mentioned allegations.

2. Please provide detailed information on any steps your Excellency’s Government may have taken to ensure that the substance and implementation of the SIR process, including the administration of the claims and objection period, complies with India’s obligations under international human rights law and standards. In particular, please provide details on steps taken to ensure that the SIR process has not resulted in the exclusion of eligible voters from their participation in the public elections of 2026.
3. Please provide details on safeguards ensuring that members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities are not discriminated against in the framework of the SIR process and the determination of their voter status. In this context, please provide detailed information on the exact number of names that have been removed from the electoral rolls, during the SIR process, specifying the reason for deletion, as well as the number of objections and appeals filed in front of the various organs and the resulting decisions. Please also provide disaggregated data on the ethnicity and religion of individuals who have been excluded from electoral rolls, as well as individuals who have been declared ineligible after judicial adjudication. If unavailable, please explain why.
4. Please provide more details about the “claims and objections” period and, in particular, whether the process ensured a fair and effective opportunity to contest exclusions, particularly in light of reports that millions of voters were declared ineligible after judicial adjudication despite presenting valid identification.
5. Please provide details on measures taken to ensure access to effective remedies before the two-phase Assembly elections, which took place 23 and 29 April 2026, for all individuals excluded from electoral rolls.
6. Please provide information on measures undertaken to eliminate any discriminatory treatment of minorities, including Muslims and persons of Bengali descent, as well as other minorities, with regard to the right to vote and to choose their representatives freely.
7. Please provide information on measures that the State is taking to provide effective remedies to individuals found to have been wrongfully removed from electoral rolls and consequently deprived of their right to vote, particularly in cases where no timely remedy was available before the elections took place. What steps are taken to ensure accountability and to safeguard the affected individuals’ right to political participation?”

The UN provided a 60-day period for the Indian government to respond before the communication is permanently hosted on the public reporting website. The Rapporteurs noted they might issue a public statement sooner, as they consider the initial information “sufficiently reliable to indicate a matter warranting immediate attention”.

The Special Rapporteurs requested that “all necessary interim measures be taken to halt the alleged violations and prevent their re-occurrence,” and if the details are confirmed by investigation, to “ensure the accountability of any person(s) responsible for the alleged violations”.

The UN’s official Communication dated May 1, 2026 can be accessed from here

Related:

Disenfranchisement route to Majoritarian Rule: Political Logic of SIR

Exclusive Investigation SIR: How many voters did the ECI actually disenfranchise? Why do final figures show inexplicable ‘additions’?

Judgement delivered, paradox prevails: every voter a citizen, but what is the fate of 51.8 million excluded?

SC greenlights SIR, upholds ECI’s power to revise electoral rolls

The Bihar Verdict 2025: How an election was engineered before votes were cast

The post UN Rights Experts flag Discrimination in ECI’s SIR exercise, seek India’s response appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to The Indian Express, Justice Suraj Govindaraj directed the FRRO to verify the identity of Abdul Rahim and ascertain whether he is the same individual who was convicted by a sessions court in Uttar Pradesh in a case alleging illegal entry from Bangladesh. The conviction is currently under challenge before the Allahabad High Court.

In an interim order, the copy of which is yet to be made available, the court restrained the authorities from deporting Rahim until the next date of hearing, fixed for July 14. The court also directed the FRRO to obtain instructions regarding the pending proceedings before the Allahabad High Court and determine whether those proceedings relate to the same person against whom the present deportation order has been passed.

Detained during verification drive

As reported by Indian Express, Rahim stated in his petition that he was born on April 14, 1979, in New Seemapuri, Delhi, and has lived and worked in India throughout his life. He was detained on March 5, 2026, by the Parappana Agrahara police during a drive to identify suspected undocumented Bangladeshi migrants and was subsequently handed over to the FRRO.

On the same day, the FRRO passed an order under Section 7(2)(f) of the Foreigners Act, 2025, read with Paragraph 8 of the Immigration and Foreigners Order, restricting his movement and directing that he reside at the Utile Foundation detention centre in Kothanur, Bengaluru. The FRRO order identified him as “Md. Rahim Howladar, son of Md. Motaleb Howladar,” and proceeded on the assumption that he was a foreign national.

Citizenship documents produced before court

Appearing for Rahim, advocate Clifton D. Rozario argued that his client is an Indian citizen by birth and produced several public documents, including a birth certificate, passport, voter identity card, Aadhaar card, PAN card, driving licence and records relating to his family members.

The petition contended that the detention order was passed without notice, without an opportunity of hearing and without any meaningful inquiry into his citizenship status. It alleged violations of Articles 14, 15, 21 and 22 of the Constitution and stated that the detention had disrupted Rahim’s livelihood and caused hardship to his wife and infant child.

Connection to Uttar Pradesh conviction

The case has an additional layer of complexity because Rahim was convicted in 2012 by an Additional District and Sessions Judge in Ghaziabad under Section 14A(b) of the Foreigners Act, 1946, for allegedly entering and residing in India without valid documents. In that case, he was identified as “Abdul Rahim, son of Shah Jamal, resident of Bagerhat, Bangladesh.”

According to the petition, Indian Express reported, the conviction was largely based on the statutory burden under the Foreigners Act requiring the accused to establish citizenship, and on the finding that the documents produced were not satisfactory. Rahim appealed the conviction before the Allahabad High Court in 2012, where the appeal was admitted and he was granted bail. The appeal remains pending.

Rozario argued that the present detention and deportation proceedings amount to double jeopardy, prohibited under Article 20 of the Constitution, which protects individuals from being prosecuted and punished more than once for the same offence.

Business and family life in Bengaluru

Rahim told the court that he moved from Delhi to Bengaluru in 2014 and established a waste management and scrap trading business through a government-registered proprietorship. He also holds a GST registration certificate issued under the Karnataka Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017.

As reported by Times of India, he argued that he has built his family and economic life in Bengaluru and that the deportation proceedings were initiated without even issuing him a prior notice.

Court seeks identity verification before deportation

Observing that the petition raises issues requiring factual verification, the Karnataka High Court directed the FRRO to ascertain Rahim’s identity before taking any coercive action. The court’s interim protection will remain in force until the matter is heard again on July 14.

According to the report of Scroll, the petition seeks quashing of the FRRO order and Rahim’s release from custody, while the court’s immediate focus remains on determining whether the detainee is indeed the same person involved in the pending Uttar Pradesh proceedings and whether the deportation order has been issued against the correct individual.

Related:

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Gauhati HC upholds foreigner declaration, reasserts harsh reverse burden under colonial-era Foreigners Act

No ‘Inherited’ Foreigner Status: Gauhati HC protects children from automatic declaration

Gauhati High Court directs State to file affidavit on alleged deportation of Doyjan Bibi without due process

When a Spelling Error Can Cost Citizenship: Supreme Court stays deportation of five Assam women

From Forest Settlers to ‘Encroachers’: The eviction crisis in Assam’s Taungya Villages

Assam, the third state to pass UCC: Gender justice or targeted communalism the aim?

The post Karnataka HC stays FRRO deportation order over disputed citizenship claim appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Background of the case and procedural history

 The appellants, Mayadhar Nayak and Baina Nayak, were daily wagers belonging to the Scheduled Castes, who served the Government Treasury Branch of SBI in Bhubaneswar as cleaners and sweepers for approximately three decades, starting in 1994 and 1995, respectively.

The appellants had previously approached the Court in 1999 regarding non-regularisation of service and denial of pay on par with temporary employees. This produced an interim protective order on October 28, 1999 where the Court said, “If there is work for the Petitioners, they may not be retrenched.” The Court had directed the Bank to pay them remuneration under the Minimum Wages Act and be allowed to continue working as long as work was available, without being substituted by new hands. The Court also asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose.

In 2007, the appellants again approached the Court claiming that the Bank was seeking to fill up the posts of Sweepers and other menial staff without considering their claim for appointment. This time too, the Court asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose, keeping in view the length of their engagement and the services.

In terms of the above order, Appellants were paid on September 17, 2021 the arrears of minimum wages quantified at Rs.1, 61,619/- , each, for the period between April, 2017 & June, 2021.

Around five years later, in 2012, the appellants filed another petition for their recognition as temporary employees, pay parity under the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’, release of bonus for the financial year 2011–12, and extension of all temporary service benefits as granted to similarly situated employees of the Bank.

In 2020, the appellants another petition seeking regularisation of their services, contending that the Bank had regularised the services of a similarly situated employee engaged as a ‘Liftman’ at the time, the appellants were receiving a consolidated monthly remuneration of Rs.16,406/- while other temporary employees of the Bank were receiving Rs.27,443/-.

On June 20 2025, a single judge bench Justice S.K. Panigrahi which was hearing both the petitions together dismissed the appellants’ writ petitions finding all their claims unsustainable. The judgment read:

“While this Court does not disregard the long and uninterrupted service rendered by the petitioners, it is well-settled that mere length of service does not by itself confer a right to regularisation. The consistent position in law is that engagement on a daily wage or casual basis, however prolonged, cannot mature into a claim for regular appointment in the absence of sanctioned posts and adherence to a lawful selection process.” (Para 18).

In 2022, the Bank had sought permission to retrench the Appellants as being surplus workers.

On July 19, 2025, the appellants were retrenched by the bank as surplus workers under Section 25F of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and were paid roughly Rs. 3.31 lakh each as statutory compensation and payment due to a policy shift toward outsourcing driven by IT developments in banking.

The division bench presently hearing the case, had to decide whether

• the appellants, after nearly 30 years of service were entitled to regularisation and consequential monetary benefits,
• the previous court orders, which only directed the payment of minimum wages and conditional consideration for vacancies, barred the appellants’ current claims for regularisation, and
• what constitutes fair ‘remediable and reparative justice’ for manual labourers in an era of outsourcing and AI, when regularisation might impose an excessive financial burden on the employer.

High Court’s intervention

 The Division Bench partially allowed the appeals and set aside the order of the Single Judge through an order on May 18, 2026. In that it said:

“There appears to be a prima facie case for granting relief to the Appellants herein, who admittedly have put in service as Sweepers, first Appellant from 1994, and the second from 1995. The law, as it now stands in the June of its life, tilts in favour of the Appellant’s herein, inasmuch as, arguably, the impugned order of the learned Single Judge has missed the march”

• Declined Regularisation

The Court declined to order regularisation. Reliance was placed on Supreme Court’s rulings in Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), and Shripal v. Nagar Nigam (2025) but the Court noted it would cause the Bank to bear the brunt of losing huge money and that the appellants’ prior cases only resulted in a direction for minimum wages. At the same time, the Court observed that the appellants’ earlier rounds of litigation had not secured them much real benefit, since those orders only directed payment of minimum wages, which SBI had already paid. Because of this, the Bench held that the regularisation claim in the present appeals was, to an extent, barred by the principle of res judicata.

The Court then referred to a coordinate Bench’s order in Secretary, Berhampur Cooperative Central Bank Ltd. v. Bhaba Sundar Dalai (2026), where Rs 10 lakh had been awarded as compensation in lieu of regularisation. However, the Bench distinguished that case as there was no res judicata bar in it, and the employees’ service was comparatively shorter.

The Court took note of two mitigating factors specific to the present appellants, that they had roughly ten years left before superannuation, and that both belonged to Scheduled Castes, as relevant considerations in shaping the final relief.

• Justification for the Compensation Amount

In the May order, the Court had suggested both the sides to negotiate a settlement with fairness and justice. The SBI proposed to pay a lump sum compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to each of the appellants to settle the dispute. However, the appellants rejected the bank’s offer and during a personal interaction with the Court, they stated they would settle for Rs. 25 lakh each

The Court evaluated both proposals and described the Bank’s Rs. 5 lakh offer inadequate. It said:

“Rupees 5 lakh offer made by the Bank as compensation is too frugal to be mentioned, when bread is costlier than blood, Rupee value now-a-days dwindling down. The Appellants, who have given their sweat & blood, cannot seek gainful employment elsewhere at their present declining age. They were working only as sweepers with not much education nor with due social status.” (Para 7.3.2)

Instead, the Court awarded a lump sum compensation of Rs. 20, 00,000 (Twenty Lakh) to each appellant in lieu of regularisation and continued service.

While deciding the compensation amount, it remarked:

“In the AI era, we are not sure that they would be able to eke out their livelihood, having spent prime of their life blood in the menial job all these years. Even Rs.10 lakh compensation awarded by the Coordinate Bench to the workmen of a Cooperative Bank would not constitute a solid yardstick for determining what should be paid to these poor persons. Should Appellants be regularized in service, it would incur more expenditure than otherwise.” (Para 7.3.2)

The Bank was ordered to pay the total Rs. 40 lakh within eight weeks. Any delay would trigger an interest penalty (1% for the first month and 2% thereafter), which the Court directed should be recovered personally from the erring bank officials.

The full judgment may be read here:

Why Regularisation Never Came

 The Fifth Schedule to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, that designates certain practices as unfair labour practices includes:

 “10. To employ workmen as “badlis”, casuals or temporaries and to continue them as such for years, with the object of depriving them of the status and privileges of permanent workmen.”

 For thirty years, and over 240 days annually, the appellants discharged their duty in continuity. For context, the Government Treasury Branch of the Bank occupies more than 11,000 square feet, spread over three levels comprising the upper basement, ground floor, and first floor. The premises include eight toilets and six urinals. The Appellants had been performing cleaning duties in the said premises along with outsourced employees.

The denial of regularisation and long-term benefits to contractual or temporary workers is a heavily litigated issue in India, and not unique to the present case. In Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Umadevi (2006) the Court clarified that temporary, daily wage, or contractual employees do not possess a legal or fundamental right to be made permanent. It held that a court cannot issue a writ of mandamus to make a worker permanent because the worker has no enforceable legal right to such a status, and the State has no legal duty to provide it outside of established rules. However, the Court also provided a narrow exception as a one-time measure for workers who have completed at least 10 years of service. Regularisation, it held, may be permitted where the appointment was irregular (meaning it suffered from a procedural flaw) but not illegal.

In Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court said that the appellants’ long and uninterrupted service, for periods extending well beyond ten years, cannot be brushed aside merely by labelling their initial appointments as part-time or contractual. The essence of their employment must be considered in the light of their sustained contribution, the integral nature of their work, and the fact that no evidence suggests their entry was through any illegal or surreptitious route. The judgment read:

“The claim by the respondents that these were not regular posts lacks merit, as the nature of the work performed by the appellants was perennial and fundamental to the functioning of the offices. The recurring nature of these duties necessitates their classification as regular posts, irrespective of how their initial engagements were labelled. It is also noteworthy that subsequent outsourcing of these same tasks to private agencies after the appellants’ termination demonstrates the inherent need for these services. This act of outsourcing, which effectively replaced one set of workers with another, further underscores that the work in question was neither temporary nor occasional.” (Para 13)

In Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. vs Brajrajnagar Coal Mines Workers Union (2024), the Court held that workers engaged to perform work of regular and perennial nature cannot be treated as contract labour.

Similarly, last year, in Shripal vs Nagar Nigam (2025), the Supreme Court while acknowledging the precedence in Umadevi, emphasised that workers performing duties that are integral, ongoing, and perennial to an institution’s functions should not be relegated to perpetual daily-wage status. The judgment authored by Justice Vikram Nath said:

“While the judgment in Uma Devi (supra) sought to curtail the practice of backdoor entries and ensure appointments adhered to constitutional principles, it is regrettable that its principles are often misinterpreted or misapplied to deny legitimate claims of long-serving employees. This judgment aimed to distinguish between “illegal” and “irregular” appointments. It categorically held that employees in irregular appointments, who were engaged in duly sanctioned posts and had served continuously for more than ten years, should be considered for regularization as a one-time measure. However, the laudable intent of the judgment is being subverted when institutions rely on its dicta to indiscriminately reject the claims of employees, even in cases where their appointments are not illegal, but merely lack adherence to procedural formalities.” (Para 26).

“Indian labour law strongly disfavours perpetual daily-wage or contractual engagements in circumstances where the work is permanent in nature. Morally and legally, workers who fulfil ongoing municipal requirements year after year cannot be dismissed summarily as dispensable, particularly in the absence of a genuine contractor agreement.” (Para 15).

To continue extracting regular labour for decades while pleading a lack of sanctioned strength is a position the Court found legally and morally unsustainable in Dharam Singh vs State of UP (2025).

In January this year, in Bhola Nath vs The State Of Jharkhand (2026), the Court while finding the State’s refusal to regularise the workers who had served for over a decade to be a clear derogation of equality principles, directed the State to forthwith regularise the appellants against the sanctioned posts they were initially appointed to, granting them all consequential service benefits

Hence, while long service alone does not guarantee automatic regularisation, the Supreme Court has ruled that continuing workers in identical, perpetual roles on temporary wages while denying them benefits can be considered arbitrary and discriminatory.

During the litigation, the appellants in present case- Mayadhar Nayak supported his wife, two children, and a father aged about 80 years. On the other hand, Baina Nayak was the sole caretaker of a mentally and physically disabled child and another son, all of whom dependent on his meagre income of about Rs 16,000.

On paper, the Nayaks had reason to expect a better outcome. They approached the High Court as early as 1999 where a coordinate bench even secured them protection against retrenchment in 1999, and in 2007 the Court directed SBI to consider them if sweeper vacancies were filled. Yet each of these interventions never fruitioned into regularisation.

When two vacancies did arise after the 2007/2008 orders, SBI chose to outsource the cleaning function rather than fill the posts departmentally citing a policy shift attributed to changes in banking operations. Because this outsourcing decision was never independently challenged, it stood, and it extinguished the very condition on which the appellants’ continued engagement depended. Rather than terminating long-serving casual workers outright, the restructuring of the underlying work itself dissolved the employee’s along with the post. By the time the Division Bench heard the 2025 appeals, it held that the earlier 2007/2008 orders had already adjudicated.

Compensation and Delayed Justice

 Regularisation would have given the appellants a pension, medical benefits, promotional prospects, and crucially continued income until superannuation. A one-time payment, however large, is a terminal substitute.

 None of this is to say compensation is worthless. Rs20 lakh each is a materially significant, life-altering sum, and the Court’s insistence on interest for delay and personal liability of erring officials for that interest is a genuinely useful enforcement mechanism. But as a systemic remedy for decades of institutionalised casualisation, compensation calculated case-by-case, in peculiar facts and circumstances, explicitly disclaiming precedential value, plausibly should not substitute for either a binding regularisation scheme or statutory reform that removes employers’ incentive to keep essential, perennial work permanently temporary! While salary or lump-sum compensation prevents destitution, it does not cure systemic exploitation. Compensation is at best a consolation, and workers deserve justice, not just money. Compensation does little to restore lost career opportunities, dignity and security.

 “The Appellants have been fighting the legal battles since about three decades, complete justice eluding for one or the other reason,” acknowledged the Orissa High Court in the present case.

This is not unusual. Delay is a common feature of our judicial system. Labour disputes in India typically take somewhere between seven to ten years to reach a final judgment. Pendency of labour disputes in general for long period of time leads to frustration among workers.

The Delhi High Court recently flagged this delay directly, describing the backlog of pending labour matters before constitutional courts as a “sorry state of affairs” in the constitutional courts where the “poor labourers are forced to fight tooth and nail to get justice for themselves”. Reported the Indian Express.

Labour Law in the AI-era

 Tucked into the judgment’s compensation calculus, the Bench doubted the appellants could “eke out their livelihood… in the AI era,” having spent their working lives in menial labour with little education. This, on one level, was an acknowledgment that older, low-skilled workers pushed out of long-term employment have genuinely diminished prospects of re-entering the labour market. But it is worth reading as part of a broader, nascent judicial awareness that automation and technological change will compound the harm of insecure employment for low-skill, manual roles.

A public employer that outsources or automates a function bears a one-time restructuring cost but the displaced worker bears a lifetime cost, often without the education or capital to pivot into new work. The Court’s remark implicitly recognises this asymmetry, even if it does not translate it into a legal standard.

“Perennial nature of work” as a legal test may itself be eroding. Much of the jurisprudence on regularisation and contract labour assumes that if work is genuinely permanent, it should attract permanent labour protections. But work that was perennial for thirty years can be redefined as time-limited or eliminable through outsourcing plus technology, without ever being tested against the perennial nature standard in a contested proceeding.

Indian courts have long tied the right to livelihood, and by extension dignity, to Article 21. It would perhaps be an overreach to describe this as an emerging AI-era jurisprudence. But future litigants representing displaced casual workers in automating sectors like banking, toll collection, municipal sanitation may well cite this observation as an early judicial acknowledgment that technological displacement deserves distinct legal weight. The judges however have made it clear that this order is based on the facts of this case and they do not intend to make it a binding precedent or a Rule of Parity.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this judgement primer has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)

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The post The Orissa High Court awards them Rs 20 lakh each to two SBI Sweepers appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The four, Danish Sheikh, Sweety Bibi and her two sons, re-entered India through the Mahadipur border in West Bengal’s Malda district after spending months stranded in Bangladesh following their deportation in June 2025. This was the period (May-June 2025) when huge such undocumented “push out” efforts were carried out by the authorities under some instructions issued by the union government at the centre. Their return comes months after Sunali Khatun, who was pregnant at the time of her deportation, and her young son Sabir were allowed to return to India on humanitarian grounds. Together, the cases have become emblematic of the risks posed by administrative errors in citizenship determination and the constitutional imperative of ensuring that no individual is deprived of liberty without due process.

Detailed piece on Khatun’s deportation may be read here.

According to Scroll, residents of Paikar village in West Bengal’s Birbhum district confirmed that Danish Sheikh, Sweety Bibi and her two sons returned to the state after the Union Government complied with judicial directions requiring their repatriation. The families have consistently maintained that they are Indian citizens from Birbhum and had been living and working in Delhi when they were detained during an identity-verification exercise.

The deportations formed part of a wider crackdown that followed the April 2025 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir. In the weeks that followed, police in several Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states reportedly detained large numbers of Bengali-speaking persons, predominantly Muslims, and demanded documentary proof of Indian citizenship. Several individuals who allegedly failed to immediately establish their nationality were deported to Bangladesh. Subsequent investigations and court proceedings revealed that, in multiple cases, Indian citizens had been caught in the sweep.

Detailed report may be read here.

Few cases illustrate the devastating consequences of such errors more starkly than that of Sunali Khatun and her family. As reported by BBC News, Khatun, her husband Danish Sheikh and their young son were detained in Delhi after officials suspected that they were undocumented migrants. The family maintained throughout that they were Indian citizens from West Bengal. According to Khatun’s account, authorities failed to adequately verify the family’s claims or examine available evidence before initiating deportation proceedings.

The family was transported across the border into Bangladesh, where Bangladeshi authorities treated them as undocumented entrants and detained them. Instead of returning to the country of which they claimed to be citizens, they found themselves imprisoned in a foreign nation, separated from relatives and stripped of the protections ordinarily available under Indian law. What began as an administrative decision soon evolved into a humanitarian crisis.

The case exposed the extraordinary consequences of mistaken deportation. Unlike routine immigration enforcement, an erroneous determination of citizenship can sever families, deprive individuals of their nationality in practice, expose them to detention in another country and leave them without any effective legal protection. For those wrongfully deported, the consequences extend far beyond the loss of physical liberty—they amount to the denial of identity, dignity and constitutional safeguards.

The legality of these deportations soon came under judicial scrutiny. In September 2025, the Calcutta High Court, while deciding Bhodu Sekh v. Union of India & Ors. and the connected matter Amir Khan v. Union of India & Ors., delivered a strongly worded judgment directing the Union Government to bring back the deported families within four weeks.

The Division Bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra held that the authorities had acted in “hot haste” and failed to comply with basic procedural safeguards before deporting individuals who had asserted Indian citizenship. The Court found that the actions of the Delhi Police and the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) raised serious concerns under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution and underscored that executive action, even in matters concerning illegal migration, must remain subject to constitutional limitations.

The Court directed the Union Government, through the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, to facilitate the return of Sunali Khatun, Danish Sheikh and their son Sabir, along with Sweety Bibi and her two sons. In doing so, it reaffirmed that constitutional guarantees cannot be displaced by administrative expediency.

Detailed report may be read here.

The facts before the High Court painted a disturbing picture. According to the petitions, Sunali Khatun’s family was picked up by Delhi Police on June 24, 2025, during an identity-verification drive. Within forty-eight hours—and without any meaningful inquiry into their citizenship claims—they were deported to Bangladesh under orders issued by the FRRO under the Foreigners Act, 1946.

The petitioner’s case was that the family had longstanding roots in West Bengal. They possessed family members, land records and other documentary evidence linking them to Birbhum district. Significantly, Sunali’s Aadhaar and Permanent Account Number (PAN) records reflected her year of birth as 2000, directly contradicting the authorities’ assertion that she had entered India illegally in 1998—a claim that was factually impossible if the official records were accurate.

The petitioners further argued that the authorities had ignored the Ministry of Home Affairs’ own guidelines dated May 2, 2025, which required verification from the individual’s home State before deportation. They contended that no meaningful opportunity of hearing had been provided and that the deportations violated both statutory procedure and the constitutional guarantee of fairness.

The Union Government defended its actions by relying on Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, arguing that the burden of proving Indian citizenship rested upon the individuals concerned. It claimed that the detainees had failed to produce sufficient documents establishing their nationality and asserted that statements recorded during interrogation indicated that they were Bangladeshi nationals who had entered India illegally. The High Court, however, found that such disputed claims required proper verification and could not justify immediate deportation without following the prescribed legal process.

Supreme Court intervention and the government’s assurance

The Union Government challenged the Calcutta High Court’s directions before the Supreme Court, questioning both the High Court’s jurisdiction and its order directing the return of the deported individuals. However, the proceedings before the apex court marked a significant shift in the Centre’s position.

On May 22, 2026, the Union Government informed the Supreme Court that it would facilitate the return of the deported individuals to India and conduct a proper inquiry into their citizenship claims before taking any further action. Appearing before a Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that, “keeping in view the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case,” the Government had decided to bring the individuals back and verify their citizenship status in accordance with law.

Detailed report may be read here.

Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for the affected families, requested that the Government’s assurance be formally recorded. Accepting the submission, the Supreme Court directed that the deported individuals be brought back to India and clarified that their continued stay would depend upon the outcome of a lawful inquiry into their citizenship claims. At the same time, the Court recorded the Government’s submission that the undertaking was being made in the peculiar facts of the case and should not be treated as a precedent for future deportation disputes.

The Centre informed the Court that the process of bringing the individuals back from Bangladesh would take approximately eight to ten days. The undertaking marked a notable departure from its earlier stand, under which it had defended the deportations as lawful exercises of executive power under the Foreigners Act.

The Supreme Court had, in fact, intervened even earlier in December 2025 in respect of Sunali Khatun. At the time, she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and remained stranded in Bangladesh along with her young son. Considering the humanitarian dimensions of the case, the Court permitted their return to India while the dispute regarding citizenship remained pending. During those proceedings, the Bench observed that certain situations required “law to bend to humanity”—a remark that underscored the Court’s attempt to reconcile immigration enforcement with constitutional compassion.

Detailed report may be read here.

Constitutional questions beyond individual cases

The litigation has raised issues that extend far beyond the fate of a handful of families. At its core lies a fundamental constitutional question: can the State deport a person claiming Indian citizenship without first conducting a fair, thorough and lawful determination of that claim?

The Calcutta High Court answered this question emphatically in the negative. The Court observed that documentary material placed before it, including electoral records relating to members of the deportees’ families, prima facie indicated Indian lineage and warranted a detailed inquiry before any coercive action could be taken. Instead, the authorities acted with what the Court described as “hot haste”, deporting individuals within days of detention and without adhering to procedural safeguards contained in the Ministry of Home Affairs’ own guidelines.

The proceedings also highlighted the constitutional significance of Articles 14 and 21. Even where the State suspects an individual to be a foreign national, executive action must satisfy the requirements of fairness, reasonableness and due process. Citizenship disputes cannot be resolved through hurried administrative action that disregards evidence or deprives individuals of an effective opportunity to establish their identity.

The Government relied heavily on Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, which places the burden of proving citizenship upon the person concerned. However, the High Court made it clear that the statutory burden cannot justify dispensing with procedural fairness. Where credible evidence exists supporting an individual’s claim to Indian citizenship, authorities are required to conduct a meaningful verification before resorting to the irreversible step of deportation.

The cases have also revived discussion around the principle of non-refoulement—the international law norm prohibiting the forcible return of individuals to territories where they may face persecution, arbitrary detention or other serious harm. Although India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Indian courts have repeatedly read elements of this principle into Article 21’s guarantee of life and personal liberty. The petitioners argued that deporting individuals without adequately determining their nationality violated these constitutional protections.

It is crucial to note that in the month of October 2025, a Bangladesh court had ruled that these six individuals were forcibly deported from Delhi as “illegal Bangladeshis”, and are in fact Indian citizens citing their Aadhaar and home addresses. Even pursuant to this, the Union government challenged the Calcutta HC order in the Supreme Court

Detailed report may be read here and here.

A reminder of the cost of administrative error

The legal battle reached an important milestone when Danish Sheikh, Sweety Bibi and her two sons finally returned to West Bengal through the Mahadipur border crossing in Malda district. Their return followed months of litigation and judicial scrutiny that ultimately compelled the Union Government to revisit its position.

Political and legal advocacy around the issue was not confined to the courtroom. Even before the present litigation reached the Supreme Court, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) had repeatedly raised concerns over the treatment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers and alleged instances of wrongful detention and deportation. In May 2025, Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah seeking immediate intervention against the reported harassment, detention and violence faced by Bengali-speaking workers in BJP-ruled states. Around the same time, Berhampore MP Yusuf Pathan also expressed concern over reports that migrant labourers from his constituency were being systematically targeted in Odisha, calling for measures to ensure their safety and protection.

The issue soon reached the Supreme Court in a broader constitutional challenge. In August 2025, the Court sought responses from the Union Government and nine States on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board alleging that migrant labourers from West Bengal were being detained on unverified allegations of being illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. As reported by The Hindu, a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi acknowledged the State’s legitimate concern over illegal infiltration but observed that there must be a mechanism to identify and protect “bona fide workers.” The petition challenged the implementation of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ May 2, 2025 circular, contending that inter-state verification drives had resulted in arbitrary detention of genuine Indian citizens.

The party also remained actively involved after the deportations of the Birbhum families. In September 2025, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam visited the families of Sunali Khatun and Sweety Bibi in Murarai, Birbhum, after the two women and their children were allegedly pushed into Bangladesh despite claiming Indian citizenship. In a post on X, Islam described them as “bona fide Indian citizens” whose families had lived in Birbhum for generations and said the party, under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, was pursuing the matter before both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court. He assured the families that every possible legal and institutional assistance would be extended, including enrolment in the State government’s Shramshree welfare scheme once the women returned to India.

Speaking to Scroll, Trinamool Congress MP Samirul Islam remarked that it was “only because of the judiciary’s intervention” that the Government ultimately brought back what he described as “poor Indian citizens.” While affirming that genuine foreign nationals could lawfully be deported, he questioned why Indian citizens should be subjected to harassment, detention and expulsion before their citizenship was properly verified.

For the affected families, the return to India represents only partial relief. Their citizenship claims are yet to be conclusively determined, and the litigation continues. Nevertheless, their repatriation serves as an acknowledgement that irreversible executive action cannot precede a lawful determination of nationality.

The episode also carries wider implications for citizenship verification exercises across the country. Since the Pahalgam terror attack, numerous reports by SabrangIndia and Citizens for Justice and Peace have documented allegations of Bengali-speaking Muslims being detained, questioned and, in some cases, deported without adequate verification. The present litigation demonstrates the serious constitutional consequences of such practices and reinforces the judiciary’s role as a safeguard against arbitrary executive action.

Detailed reports may be read here, here, here and here.

CJP has also been providing legal aid in cases of forced and illegal deportations. Details may be read here.

Ultimately, the case is not merely about immigration enforcement or citizenship documentation. It is about the constitutional obligation of the State to exercise its powers fairly, cautiously and in accordance with due process. A mistaken deportation is not a routine administrative error—it can separate families, expose individuals to imprisonment in a foreign country and effectively deprive them of their nationality. The return of these families, secured through persistent judicial intervention, stands as a reminder that constitutional guarantees acquire their greatest significance precisely when the State exercises its most coercive powers.

Related:

The Battle of Belonging: Why India’s Passport Controversy Matters

IR 2025-2026: A backdoor exercise to bring in the NRC?

SIR 2025-26: Dismantling the very Idea of India?

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

The Uneasy Calm in Assam: The Limits of Control of a Nervous Government

The post The cost of a wrongful deportation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Speaking at a memorial meeting in Bandra, Mumbai, Teesta Setalvad reflects on the extraordinary journey of the 84-year-old Jesuit priest who dedicated decades of his life to defending Adivasi communities, battling systemic injustice, achieving path-breaking victories through India’s judicial system.

Setalvad also recalls his constitutional values, his powerful writings, and the circumstances that led to his incarceration under the UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case.

As his health deteriorated in custody, repeated pleas for bail were denied.

He died a sick man, a victim of a failed system.

The post Did Indian Democracy fail Father Stan Swamy? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In other words, the Supreme Court recognised that the labour performed within households is labour. It creates value, sustains lives, reproduces communities, and makes possible the very forms of productive activity that economists, governments, and policymakers are accustomed to celebrating.

Yet beneath the welcome symbolism of the judgment lies a more disquieting question. If homemakers are indeed nation builders, why has the nation found it so difficult to see them? Why does recognition arrive most readily at the moment of death, when a court is compelled to calculate the consequences of a woman’s death, while the labour itself continues to unfold every day in a space that remains curiously peripheral to the language of economics?

The question is worth dwelling upon because it directs attention away from the judgment itself and towards the assumptions that make such recognition appear exceptional in the first place. For decades, feminist scholars have pointed out that the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, between economy and household, between production and reproduction, is neither natural nor self-evident. It is a political distinction that has acquired the appearance of nature or natural through repetition. Once established, however, it produces a peculiar inversion. The activities most essential to sustaining life become those least likely to be recognised as economically significant.

This was the insight that animated the ‘Wages for Housework’ campaign of the 1970s. When Silvia Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and Selma James demanded wages for domestic labour, they were not merely seeking a salary for homemakers, they sought to expose the hidden structure upon which capitalist economies rest. The worker arriving at a factory, an office, a school, or a government institution does not arrive fully formed. Somebody has fed that worker, cared for that worker during illness, raised that worker as a child, absorbed emotional crises, maintained living spaces, and performed the innumerable acts of care through which human beings become capable of participating in economic life. Yet the labour that reproduces labour power strangely remains outside the categories through which production is understood.

Federici’s contribution lies in her insistence that housework is not external to capitalism but one of its conditions of possibility. Capital accumulates not merely through what happens in factories and offices but through its ability to extract enormous reservoirs of labour for which it does not pay. Domestic labour though highly valuable, is ignored because its invisibility is economically useful.

If Federici exposes why domestic labour remains unpaid, Marilyn Waring reveals why women remain uncounted. In her influential work If Women Counted, Waring demonstrated that national accounting systems were never designed to measure the activities that sustain social life. They were designed to measure only the market transactions. Hence, the frameworks through which nations calculate wealth and prosperity were constructed in ways that rendered large portions of women’s work conceptually invisible from the very outset. To put it simply, it sounds nothing short of absurd. A woman preparing meals for her family contributes nothing to GDP. The same meal purchased from a restaurant contributes to economic growth. A mother caring for her child remains economically inactive. The same care purchased through the market becomes productive labour. The activity remains unchanged. What changes is its relationship to exchange.

Waring’s argument exposes the extent to which economic measurement reflects a particular philosophy of value. GDP records transactions with extraordinary precision while remaining largely indifferent to the activities that make those transactions possible. It can quantify military expenditure, financial speculation, and commodity production, yet fails to recognise the labour involved in feeding children, tending to the elderly, caring for the sick, or maintaining households. The economy, in other words, counts what passes through markets and quietly excludes much of what sustains life.

Devaki Jain, the Indian economist explained this conundrum by demonstrating how statistical categories themselves reproduce invisibility. Through her ‘Time Use Surveys’, Jain shows that women who appeared “economically inactive” within conventional labour statistics were often engaged in a dizzying array of activities like collecting water, gathering fuel, tending livestock, processing food, caring for children, supporting agricultural work, managing households, and sustaining networks of community survival. Once ‘time’ instead of ‘wages’ become the unit of analysis, an entirely different economy comes into view. Women who had been categorised as ‘non-workers’ now emerged as individuals performing longer hours of labour than men.

The ‘Time Use Survey’ extends beyond methodology as it reveals that invisibility is produced through the categories by which societies choose to organise knowledge. Michel Foucault’s analysis that systems of knowledge do not simply describe reality but actively organise it, reveals that statistics, classifications, surveys, and economic indicators function not as neutral instruments but as technologies of visibility. They determine what becomes legible and what recedes into oblivion. GDP does not simply measure the economy, more dangerously it defines what economy is. And if the homemaker disappears, it is because the dominant economic frameworks have already determined where value resides. Even when the homemaker finally gets recognition as with the Court’s ruling, it only addresses the cultural invisibility because as Nancy Fraser argues, it is the redistribution that would addresses material inequality. The problem confronting homemakers is that they have historically been denied both. Their labour has been culturally devalued and materially uncompensated. In order to recognize homemakers as nation builders, structural redistribution is essential, lest it remains only a symbolic inclusion.

Diane Elson extends the argument in analysing how economies depend upon women’s unpaid labour not only within households but also as a mechanism through which states manage crises. When public healthcare deteriorates, when childcare remains inaccessible or when welfare provisions are reduced, the resulting burdens do not vanish, it gets transferred and more often than not, they reappear within households as additional responsibilities carried by women. Elson’s description of women as the economy’s “shock absorbers” remains one of the most powerful formulations in feminist economics because it captures the silent transfer through which public failures become private obligations which we all witnessed at a large scale during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The fiscal prudence at the level of policy during whether during emergencies, lockdown or any other calamity translates into longer days, intensified caregiving responsibilities, and greater unpaid labour at the level of everyday life for women.

Does it mean that we are asking the wrong question all this time and it’s not really about the monetary value of domestic work. Amartya Sen’s capability approach offers a useful way of thinking beyond the language of valuation alone. Sen’s central insight was that human well-being cannot be reduced to income. What matters are the substantive freedoms individuals possess to live lives they have reason to value. The predicament of homemakers is not merely that they remain unpaid. It is in reality those decades devoted to sustaining households that of the leave women physically unfit without independent assets, pension rights, social security, economic autonomy, or meaningful control over their futures. Thus, we need to move the conversation from compensation to capability.

A society genuinely committed to recognising care would therefore have to think beyond symbolic gestures and beyond wages alone. It would require pensions for caregivers, universal social security, robust childcare systems, healthcare guarantees, inheritance protections, and policies that expand women’s capabilities rather than merely assigning monetary value to their labour like 30,000 rupees.

The Supreme Court’s judgment is not merely the value of domestic labour but the limitations of the frameworks through which value itself is understood. For too long, economies have been imagined through the language of production while treating the reproduction of life as an afterthought. Feminist scholars have spent decades challenging this hierarchy. Societies survive not because markets function efficiently but because vast amounts of labour continue to be performed beyond the market’s gaze.

The homemaker has always been a nation builder. The real challenge posed by the Court’s judgment is whether we are prepared to reconstruct our understanding of the economy around that fact, or whether we will continue to celebrate the labour that sustains society while organising our measures of prosperity around everything except the work that makes life possible.

(The author teaches at Sarojini Naidu Centre for Women’s Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi)

[1] “We are also of the view that the housewife contributes to the growth of the human being and the nation. The homemaker builds nation. So we have laid down the principles, and as a nation builder, we have housewife, we have quantified the amount that the loss of domestic care monthly income minimum in any event would be 30,000 per month,” Justice Karol said at the time of pronouncement. “The homemakers, to put it directly, actually are the ‘nation builders’ and they ought to be recognised as such.” The Court stringently observed that homemakers continue to be perceived as dependent on earning members despite the household substantially depending on their labour and care. The bench noted that unpaid domestic and caregiving work performed by women remains economically undervalued despite its enormous contribution to society and the economy. “It is ironic to describe a homemaker as dependant on earning members, when, in reality the household’s functioning depends substantially on the homemaker,” the Bench said. The judgment contains an extensive discussion on the social, emotional, economic and psychological contributions made by homemakers. Referring to women as the first teachers of children and the unseen force behind families, the Court said homemakers play a central role in shaping human capital, social bonds and national development: https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/homemakers-are-nation-builders-supreme-court-quantifies-homemaker-contribution-as-rs-30k-per-month-537483

Related:

‘Married woman told to do household work will not be seen as maid servant’: Bombay HC

Kerala HC: “Even if a woman wears a ‘provocative dress’ that cannot give a licence to a man to outrage her modesty”

The post Women: Nation builders, missing from the nation’s books appeared first on SabrangIndia.