These were not routine disputes. They involved some of the most fundamental questions a constitutional democracy can confront.

• What happens when citizenship is assessed through imperfect documents? How should courts respond to allegations of extra-judicial killings by state agencies?
• Can access to reservation be denied despite an undisputed claim to social disadvantage?
• Does privacy survive within the intimate space of marriage?
• To what extent can environmental violations be regularised after the fact?
• How much power can unelected constitutional authorities exercise over the decisions of elected governments?
• And how far may the State intervene in the administration of minority religious institutions?

The answers offered by the Court reveal an important judicial trend. In several of the year’s most consequential judgments, the Court displayed a marked preference for procedural rigour, institutional finality and administrative deference. Questions of substantive justice frequently became secondary to questions of compliance. Structural inequalities often received less attention than formal legal requirements. Concerns about accountability were sometimes met with faith in existing institutions rather than the creation of stronger oversight mechanisms. In matters involving citizenship, reservation, police violence, environmental governance and constitutional accountability, the Court often chose restraint where intervention was sought and certainty where contextual flexibility was urged.

To be sure, judicial restraint is itself a constitutional value. Courts cannot govern, administer or legislate. Yet constitutional adjudication has always demanded more than technical legal reasoning. It requires courts to recognise the unequal realities within which law operates and to ensure that constitutional guarantees remain meaningful for those who possess the least social, political and economic power. It is against this backdrop that the Supreme Court’s major decisions of 2025 must be understood—not merely as isolated rulings on discrete legal questions, but as judgments that collectively illuminate the Court’s evolving understanding of rights, accountability, state power and constitutional governance.

Reintroducing three years bar practice raises concern on deepening structural inequality in judicial recruitment

In All India Judges Association v. Union of India, the Supreme Court delivered their judgment in May 2025, restoring the requirement of prior legal practice as a condition for appearing in lower judicial service examinations, effectively overturning the position adopted in the Third AIJA judgment (1999), which had removed the practice mandate. The Court justified the move on the ground that newly recruited judicial officers often lack practical courtroom experience and familiarity with litigation processes. Relying on the views of several High Courts and earlier observations in the Second AIJA case, the Court held that three years of practice at the Bar would better equip candidates for the responsibilities of trial court adjudication from the very first day of service.

The judgment also clarified that the three-year practice requirement would be calculated from the date of provisional enrolment, and candidates would need certification from an advocate with at least ten years’ standing or from a presiding officer to verify actual legal practice. The Court viewed practical exposure to litigation, client interaction, drafting, and courtroom procedure as indispensable for improving the quality of the subordinate judiciary. In doing so, it sought to standardise eligibility conditions across States and strengthen institutional competence at the grassroots level of the judicial system.

However, the ruling has attracted significant criticism for creating structural barriers that disproportionately affect first-generation lawyers, economically weaker aspirants, women, and candidates from marginalised communities. On of the criticism is that the requirement risks reinforcing nepotism and inherited privilege within the legal profession, as candidates from established legal families are far more likely to secure stable chamber placements, financial support, and meaningful litigation exposure during the mandatory practice period. By contrast, many young graduates—particularly from Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, minority, and rural backgrounds—often struggle to survive financially in the initial years of litigation practice, which remains deeply informal, underpaid, and dependent on personal networks.

The impact on women candidates may be especially severe. Litigation spaces in many parts of India continue to be male-dominated, insecure, and institutionally exclusionary, with persistent concerns regarding harassment, lack of mentorship, unequal briefing opportunities, and unsafe working conditions. For many women aspirants, direct entry into judicial service after graduation had become a relatively stable and dignified avenue for professional advancement and financial independence. The mandatory practice requirement may now force them into precarious professional environments for several years before they can even compete for judicial posts, potentially discouraging participation and reducing diversity within the judiciary itself.

The judgment fails to justify why exactly three years of practice constitutes the appropriate threshold for judicial competence. The Court did not provide any empirical or institutional basis for fixing this duration, raising concerns of arbitrariness under Article 14. It can be further argued that instead of excluding fresh graduates altogether, the Court could have strengthened judicial academies and post-selection training mechanisms, as earlier recognised in the Third AIJA judgment. Additionally, the possibility of exploitation during the mandatory practice period and the emergence of informal “certificate” systems, where young advocates may become dependent on senior lawyers for proof of practice, thereby creating new forms of gatekeeping within judicial recruitment.

Citizenship by Technicality: When documentary perfection trumped substantive justice

The Supreme Court’s decision in Rofiqul Hoque v. Union of India, also delivered in May last year, reflects a deeply formalistic approach to citizenship adjudication in Assam, one that places overwhelming emphasis on documentary precision while paying insufficient attention to the realities of record-keeping, migration, poverty, and bureaucratic inconsistency. While the Court correctly reiterated the legal principle from Abdul Kuddus that inclusion in the NRC cannot override a prior declaration by a Foreigners Tribunal, the troubling aspect of the judgment lies in its treatment of evidence and its unwillingness to contextualise documentary discrepancies.

The Court accepted the Tribunal’s rejection of the petitioner’s evidence based on variations in age, village names, and familial details appearing across electoral rolls spanning several decades. However, such discrepancies are hardly uncommon in rural India, where voter lists, land records, school certificates and identity documents have historically been riddled with clerical errors, transliteration mistakes, inaccurate age recording, and inconsistent spellings. Previous Supreme Court jurisprudence had generally recognised these realities and assessed citizenship claims by examining the cumulative credibility of the evidence rather than demanding documentary perfection. In Rofiqul Hoque, however, minor inconsistencies were elevated into determinative defects without sufficient consideration of whether they actually undermined the core claim of lineage.

Particularly concerning is the Court’s treatment of the village discrepancy. The judgment faulted the petitioner for not explaining the movement of his family between villages and districts over time. Yet migration within Assam for work, river erosion, floods, displacement, marriage and economic necessity is a common social reality. Expecting individuals to produce documentary proof of every movement made by previous generations places an extraordinarily onerous burden on those already struggling to establish citizenship. The Court’s reasoning effectively transforms the burden under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act into a near-impossible evidentiary standard for many poor and rural residents whose lives were never documented with administrative precision.

The consequences of this approach extend far beyond the individual petitioner. Citizenship proceedings in Assam disproportionately affect economically vulnerable communities, linguistic minorities, Muslims, women, landless labourers and persons with limited access to education and documentation. Women, in particular, often face severe documentation gaps because their identities are frequently recorded through male relatives, marriage results in changes of residence, and formal educational records are absent. By treating documentary inconsistencies as fatal without adequately accounting for these structural realities, the judgment risks reinforcing existing inequalities in citizenship determination.

Equally troubling is the Court’s failure to interrogate the broader reliability of the documentation regime itself. Electoral rolls prepared by the State, school records maintained by public institutions, and official identity documents are all products of government processes. When inconsistencies emerge across these records, the burden is placed entirely upon the individual to explain them, while the systemic deficiencies that produced such discrepancies escape scrutiny. The judgment therefore shifts the consequences of administrative failure onto those whose citizenship is under challenge.

While the Court was legally justified in holding that NRC inclusion cannot nullify a Foreigners Tribunal declaration, the judgment ultimately reflects a narrow and technical conception of citizenship adjudication. In a context where the stakes involve detention, statelessness, family separation and loss of fundamental rights, constitutional courts are expected to adopt a more humane and contextual assessment of evidence. Instead, Rofiqul Hoque signals a move towards documentary rigidity, where minor inconsistencies can outweigh the broader evidentiary picture and where procedural exactitude risks eclipsing substantive justice.

Detailed report may be read here.

Reservation reduced to a technicality

In this judgment, delivered in May, the Supreme Court adopted an extremely formalistic approach to reservation by holding that a candidate belonging to the OBC category could be denied the benefit of reservation solely because he submitted a caste certificate in the format prescribed for Central Government employment rather than the specific format required by the Uttar Pradesh recruitment advertisement. The Court held that compliance with the prescribed format was mandatory and that candidates could not seek relaxation merely because they genuinely belonged to a reserved category.

The ruling prioritises procedural compliance over substantive justice. There was no dispute about the candidate’s social identity, caste status, or eligibility for reservation. The rejection was based entirely on the format of the certificate rather than the authenticity of the claim itself. By treating reservation as a matter of paperwork rather than a constitutional mechanism designed to remedy historical disadvantage, the Court effectively elevated bureaucratic requirements above the objective of ensuring representation for marginalised communities.

The judgment is particularly troubling because it ignores the realities faced by many applicants from socially and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. Recruitment processes are often complex, highly technical, and difficult to navigate. Minor mistakes in documentation are common, especially among first-generation applicants, rural candidates, and those with limited access to legal or administrative assistance. Instead of requiring authorities to verify an admittedly genuine caste claim, the Court endorsed a rigid approach that permanently excludes candidates on procedural grounds.

The consequences of such reasoning fall disproportionately on members of reserved communities, including OBCs, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women from marginalised backgrounds, and economically vulnerable applicants who rely most heavily on affirmative action measures. By reducing access to reservation to strict compliance with technical formats, the judgment risks transforming a constitutional guarantee of substantive equality into a bureaucratic exercise where form prevails over social justice.

Passing the buck on encounter accountability in the Assam fake encounters case

In June, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Assam fake encounter case represents a missed opportunity to enforce meaningful accountability for allegations of extra-judicial killings and police violence. The petition placed before the Court was not based on a handful of isolated incidents but on as many as 171 alleged encounter cases, many of which raised concerns regarding compliance with the safeguards laid down in PUCL v. State of Maharashtra. These guidelines were intended to ensure that every encounter death or serious injury is subjected to independent scrutiny precisely because the police cannot be allowed to investigate themselves in cases involving the possible use of unlawful force.

While the Court acknowledged that allegations of fake encounters, if proven, would amount to grave violations of the right to life under Article 21, it stopped short of exercising its own constitutional authority to secure an independent investigation. Instead, it transferred the matter to the Assam Human Rights Commission for inquiry. This approach is difficult to reconcile with the extraordinary nature of the allegations. The very basis of the petition was the claim that existing institutional mechanisms had failed to adequately investigate encounter cases over several years. Referring the matter back to a state-level body, without constituting an independent judicial commission, Special Investigation Team, or court-monitored inquiry, risks reproducing the same limitations that prompted the litigation in the first place.

The judgment is particularly striking because the Court appeared to undertake a preliminary assessment of the allegations and observed that, barring a few cases, it was difficult to infer widespread non-compliance with the PUCL guidelines. Such observations sit uneasily with the Court’s simultaneous decision to direct a fresh inquiry. If the allegations required independent scrutiny, there was little reason for the Court to make broad prima facie observations appearing to endorse the State’s version of events. Conversely, if the material was insufficient to warrant further intervention, the matter could have been dismissed. The judgment attempts to occupy both positions simultaneously, thereby diluting the force of its own concerns.

More fundamentally, the Court declined to confront the structural reality of encounter policing. Allegations of extra-judicial killings involve the most serious exercise of state power—the taking of life without judicial process. In such circumstances, constitutional courts have historically acted as guardians of civil liberties, particularly where victims or their families may be unable to challenge state narratives. The Court recognised that fear, intimidation and power imbalances often prevent victims from coming forward. Yet having acknowledged these realities, it refrained from creating a robust mechanism capable of overcoming them.

The consequences of this restraint are particularly significant for marginalised communities. Encounter killings and custodial violence disproportionately affect poor persons, religious minorities, Adivasis, Dalits, migrant workers and those accused of crimes who lack social or political power. These are precisely the groups least capable of securing independent investigations against the police. By declining to establish a stronger accountability framework despite the unprecedented scale of allegations before it, the Court left unresolved the central question raised by the petition: whether constitutional guarantees against arbitrary deprivation of life can be meaningfully enforced when the alleged violator is the State itself.

In the end, the judgment acknowledges the seriousness of the allegations but avoids the constitutional consequences that such seriousness demands. Faced with claims involving 171 alleged encounter cases, the Supreme Court chose institutional deference over judicial intervention. For a case that raised profound concerns about the rule of law, the decision ultimately places responsibility elsewhere rather than exercising the Court’s own extraordinary powers to uncover the truth.

Privacy sacrificed at the altar of matrimonial litigation

In a judgment with far-reaching implications for privacy within intimate relationships, the Supreme Court in July held that secretly recorded conversations between spouses are admissible in matrimonial proceedings. While the Court framed the issue as one of balancing privacy against the right to a fair trial, the decision arguably weakens one of the most significant constitutional developments of recent decades—the recognition of privacy as an intrinsic part of dignity, autonomy and personal liberty under Article 21.

The Court’s reasoning proceeds on the assumption that once a marriage has deteriorated to the point where one spouse is secretly recording the other, the relationship has already broken down and concerns regarding privacy lose much of their force. This logic is troubling. Constitutional rights do not disappear because a relationship is strained. If anything, privacy protections become more important in situations of conflict, where surveillance, coercion and monitoring are most likely to occur. The judgment appears to reduce privacy to a matter of marital harmony rather than treating it as an independent constitutional value that survives even within family relationships.

Equally concerning is the Court’s reliance on Section 122 of the Evidence Act. The provision was intended to create limited exceptions to spousal privilege in litigation between spouses. It was not designed as a broad endorsement of covert surveillance or secret recording within marriage. By treating admissibility as a natural extension of the statutory exception, the judgment blurs the distinction between permitting evidence in court and legitimising the way that evidence is obtained. The result is that evidence procured through intrusion into private conversations may now be rewarded with evidentiary value, potentially incentivising greater monitoring between spouses.

The practical consequences of the ruling are likely to be felt unevenly. Women, who continue to face disproportionate levels of surveillance and control within domestic relationships, may be particularly vulnerable. In abusive or coercive marriages, phones, messages, and conversations are often monitored as tools of domination. By validating secretly recorded conversations as admissible evidence, the judgment risks normalising forms of conduct that are frequently associated with domestic control rather than legitimate evidence-gathering. The Court does not meaningfully engage with these realities or with the gendered dimensions of privacy violations within the home.

The implications extend beyond women. LGBTQ+ persons, individuals in interfaith marriages, and members of socially marginalised communities often rely upon privacy as a shield against social stigma, family interference, and discrimination. The judgment’s expansive acceptance of covert recordings may create anxieties about whether intimate conversations, personal disclosures, or private vulnerabilities could later be weaponised in litigation. In privileging evidentiary utility over informational privacy, the Court offers little guidance on where constitutional limits to such surveillance should lie.

At a broader level, the judgment sits uneasily with the privacy jurisprudence developed after the Supreme Court’s recognition of privacy as a fundamental right. Rather than asking whether secret recordings constitute a disproportionate intrusion into personal autonomy, the Court approached the issue primarily through the lens of evidentiary necessity and fair trial rights. The result is a decision that substantially expands the admissibility of privately obtained evidence while offering only limited protection against the growing possibility of surveillance within the most intimate sphere of human life—the family itself.

Stray dog verdict undermines animal welfare protections and established legal frameworks

In August, In Re: Menace of Dog Bites and Rabies (2025), the Supreme Court adopted an unprecedented approach to stray dog management by directing authorities in Delhi, Noida, Gurugram and Ghaziabad to immediately pick up stray dogs from public spaces and detain them in shelters without releasing them back into their original locations. The Court further warned that individuals or organisations obstructing the exercise could face legal consequences and contempt proceedings. Emphasising the need to protect children from dog attacks and rabies, the Court declared that “no sentiments should be involved” in addressing the issue.

The judgment marks a significant departure from India’s existing animal welfare framework. The Animal Birth Control Rules, framed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, are based on the principle of capture, sterilisation, vaccination and release of dogs back into the same locality. This framework was developed after years of scientific and policy deliberation and has consistently been recognised as the governing legal regime for stray dog management. By directing that no captured dog should be released under any circumstances, the Court effectively displaced the statutory scheme without engaging with the rationale underlying it. In doing so, the judgment elevates a judicially crafted solution over a legislatively enacted framework designed to balance public health concerns with animal welfare obligations.

The ruling is also troubling for its treatment of animal welfare voices and participatory decision-making. The Court refused to entertain intervention applications from animal welfare stakeholders and expressly stated that no sentiments should be involved in the matter. However, questions concerning stray animal management have long involved competing interests, including public safety, animal welfare, municipal governance and scientific expertise. By excluding welfare organisations and discouraging contrary perspectives, the judgment narrows the scope for informed and evidence-based policymaking. The result is a highly securitised approach that treats stray animals primarily as a threat rather than as living beings protected under existing legal frameworks.

The consequences of the judgment are likely to fall disproportionately on both animals and vulnerable communities. The Court’s directions require the creation of large-scale shelter infrastructure capable of housing thousands of dogs indefinitely. Yet many municipal bodies already struggle to implement existing sterilisation and vaccination programmes due to resource constraints. The absence of a clear roadmap regarding shelter capacity, funding, veterinary care and long-term maintenance raises serious concerns about overcrowding, neglect and institutionalised confinement of animals. At the same time, poorer localities—which often face the greatest deficits in public health and municipal services—may bear the burden of implementing an expensive and administratively demanding model that lacks demonstrated feasibility.

Viewed more broadly, the judgment represents a retreat from the rights-based and welfare-oriented jurisprudence that has characterised much of India’s animal protection law over the past two decades. Rather than strengthening implementation of existing legal mechanisms, the Court opted for a sweeping solution that effectively side-lines statutory protections in favour of indefinite detention. In a year that witnessed several progressive rulings expanding constitutional protections for vulnerable groups, this judgment stands out as a notable exception—one that prioritised immediate executive action over legal consistency, scientific evidence and established principles of animal welfare.

Sealed Covers, Finality and the Silencing of Scrutiny: The Vantara judgment

The Supreme Court’s decision accepting the SIT’s clean chit to Vantara raises serious concerns about transparency, accountability and the future of public interest litigation involving powerful private actors. While there is nothing inherently objectionable about the Court relying on an independent investigation, the troubling aspect of the judgment lies in the extraordinary degree of finality it accords to a process that remains largely shielded from public scrutiny. In September, the Court accepted the SIT’s conclusions, directed that the detailed report remain confidential, and simultaneously declared that no further complaints or proceedings based on the same allegations would be entertained before judicial, statutory or administrative forums. In effect, a matter involving wildlife conservation, animal welfare, imports of endangered species and alleged regulatory violations was brought to a conclusive end without the public ever gaining access to the material on which that conclusion was reached.

The judgment reflects an uncomfortable reliance on the sealed-cover method, a practice that has repeatedly attracted criticism in recent years. Although the Court made the summary public, the substantive report, annexures and supporting material remain inaccessible. This makes meaningful public evaluation of the findings impossible. Wildlife regulation, environmental governance and animal welfare are matters of significant public concern. When allegations are dismissed on the basis of evidence that remains hidden from public view, confidence in the process inevitably suffers. The issue is not whether Vantara is ultimately innocent or guilty of the allegations; rather, it is whether the adjudicatory process itself remains transparent enough to inspire trust.

Equally concerning is the Court’s decision to effectively foreclose future proceedings based on the same allegations. Such a direction goes beyond merely accepting the findings of an investigation. It creates a near-impenetrable shield against further scrutiny, even though new evidence may emerge in the future or different complainants may possess material that was not previously examined. Public interest litigation has historically played a crucial role in uncovering environmental harms, wildlife trafficking networks and regulatory failures. By declaring that no further complaints based on the same allegations should be entertained before any judicial, statutory or administrative forum, the Court risks chilling future whistleblowing and discouraging legitimate public oversight.

The judgment also adopts a notably deferential approach towards regulatory authorities. One of the central allegations raised by the petitioners was not merely that violations occurred, but that multiple regulatory bodies had failed to adequately discharge their responsibilities. Yet the Court’s reasoning appears to treat the existence of permits, approvals and official clearances as sufficient answers to many of the concerns raised. Environmental and wildlife jurisprudence in India has historically recognised that formal compliance does not always guarantee substantive compliance. Regulatory approvals themselves may warrant scrutiny, particularly in matters involving endangered species, conservation and large-scale wildlife transfers. The judgment leaves little room for such questioning.

Perhaps most strikingly, the Court not only dismissed the allegations but expressly left open the possibility of defamation actions and criminal proceedings against those responsible for what it termed misinformation. While litigants who make knowingly false allegations should not be immune from consequences, such observations in a public interest matter risk creating a chilling effect on activists, researchers, journalists and conservation groups seeking to raise concerns about powerful institutions. Public interest litigation often operates in spaces where complete information is unavailable to outsiders. If unsuccessful challenges are followed by the threat of defamation or criminal proceedings, legitimate watchdog activity may be deterred.

Ultimately, the judgment signals a shift away from the openness and continuing oversight that have traditionally characterised environmental and wildlife litigation. The Court may well have been satisfied that Vantara committed no legal violations. However, by relying on confidential findings, granting sweeping finality to the investigation, and discouraging future scrutiny, the decision raises larger concerns about transparency and public accountability. In a sector where independent oversight is often the only mechanism through which concerns reach the public domain, the judgment appears to prioritise closure over continued scrutiny.

A deferential approach to the Waqf amendments raises concerns for minority rights

The Supreme Court’s interim judgment on the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, delivered in September, represents one of the most consequential judicial responses to a religious freedom challenge in recent years. While the Court stayed certain provisions relating to executive determination of property disputes, it declined to suspend most of the legislation, effectively allowing a far-reaching restructuring of waqf governance to operate pending final adjudication. In doing so, the Court adopted an approach marked by substantial deference to legislative policy, even where the amendments alter long-settled understandings of waqf administration and management.

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of the judgment concerns the Court’s treatment of waqf by user. For centuries, numerous mosques, dargahs, graveyards and charitable institutions acquired recognition not through formal deeds but through uninterrupted public use and community acceptance. The doctrine evolved precisely because many religious endowments predated modern systems of land registration and documentary record-keeping. By accepting the legislative decision to effectively eliminate this category and by placing considerable emphasis on the failure of mutawallis to register properties despite statutory opportunities, the Court privileges formal documentation over historical reality. Such an approach risks exposing a significant number of longstanding religious properties to future disputes, particularly where documentary evidence has been lost, destroyed, or never existed in the first place. The judgment appears to assume that the absence of registration necessarily reflects neglect or misuse, rather than recognising the complex historical circumstances under which many waqf properties evolved.

The Court’s endorsement of the requirement that a person must have practised Islam for five years before creating a waqf also raises difficult constitutional questions. While the Court accepted the State’s concern regarding potential misuse of waqf protections, it did not sufficiently grapple with the implications of empowering the State to scrutinise the sincerity, continuity, or duration of an individual’s religious practice. Questions regarding who determines religious observance, what evidence would be considered sufficient, and whether such inquiries are compatible with constitutional protections of religious freedom remain largely unanswered. The temporary stay granted by the Court is procedural rather than substantive; the constitutional concerns underlying the provision remain unresolved.

Equally significant is the Court’s acceptance of provisions that narrow who may create waqfs and the circumstances under which waqf claims may be asserted. Historically, waqf law in India developed through a combination of religious principles, community practices and statutory regulation. The amendments shift this balance decisively toward bureaucratic control and formal compliance. By treating these changes primarily as matters of legislative policy, the judgment pays relatively little attention to the broader question of whether the cumulative effect of these provisions alters the essential character of waqf as a community-based religious institution.

The Court’s approach to the inclusion of non-Muslim members in Waqf Boards similarly reflects caution rather than rigorous constitutional scrutiny. While numerical limits were imposed through interim directions, the larger question—whether bodies entrusted with administering specifically Islamic religious endowments can be substantially reconstituted through state intervention—was effectively deferred. This issue strikes at the heart of debates concerning religious autonomy under Articles 25 and 26. Yet the judgment stops short of engaging with these concerns in any meaningful manner.

To its credit, the Court intervened where executive power threatened to displace adjudicatory functions. The stay on provisions permitting revenue officers to determine whether disputed properties constituted government land recognises that questions of title cannot simply be resolved through administrative fiat. However, this intervention also highlights a broader inconsistency within the judgment. While the Court was willing to act decisively when executive encroachment upon judicial functions became apparent, it displayed considerably greater restraint when confronted with concerns regarding religious autonomy, community rights, and the historical protection of waqf properties.

The larger concern arising from the judgment is not merely the fate of individual provisions but the constitutional vision it appears to endorse. The amendments collectively move waqf governance away from historical usage, community recognition and institutional autonomy, towards a framework centred on registration, documentation, state oversight and administrative control. The Court’s refusal to substantially intervene at the interim stage allows this transformation to proceed even before the constitutional validity of the amendments has been conclusively determined.

The significance of the judgment lies not only in what it stayed, but in what it permitted. By largely accepting Parliament’s framing of waqf reform as an exercise in transparency and accountability, the Court afforded limited weight to concerns that the amendments fundamentally alter the legal and institutional foundations upon which waqf administration has historically rested. The result is a judgment that, while cautious in form, may have profound consequences for the future of religious endowments, minority institutional autonomy, and the constitutional relationship between the State and religious communities.

Environmental Compliance Diluted: Supreme Court revives post-facto environmental clearances

In Review in Vanashakti v. Union of India (2025), a 2:1 majority of the Supreme Court recalled the landmark Vanashakti judgment delivered only months earlier, which had prohibited the Union Government from granting post-facto environmental clearances (ECs) to projects that commenced operations without obtaining prior environmental approval. Through the judgment delivered in November, the majority, led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, held that the earlier judgment had failed to consider certain coordinate bench decisions permitting post-facto clearances in exceptional circumstances. As a result, the Court reopened the question and restored the possibility of regularising projects that began operations in violation of environmental law.

The judgment represents a significant setback for environmental governance in India. The principle of prior environmental clearance lies at the heart of the country’s environmental regulatory framework. Environmental impact assessments are intended to evaluate risks before a project begins, not after ecological damage has already occurred. By permitting the continued use of post-facto clearances, the Court weakens the deterrent effect of environmental law and effectively rewards non-compliance. Instead of treating prior clearance as a mandatory legal safeguard, the judgment risks reducing it to a procedural hurdle that can be cured retrospectively once investments have already been made.

The majority’s reasoning placed considerable emphasis on economic costs, infrastructure investments and the practical difficulties associated with halting or dismantling projects. However, this approach shifts the consequences of illegal environmental conduct away from project proponents and onto affected communities and ecosystems. Once a project is operational, authorities and courts are often reluctant to order closure due to sunk costs and employment concerns. This creates a powerful incentive for developers to proceed without clearances and seek regularisation later. As Justice Ujjal Bhuyan observed in his dissent, it cannot be left to violators to invoke the consequences of their own unlawful conduct as a reason for avoiding legal accountability.

The impact of such a dilution is felt most acutely by marginalised communities. Large infrastructure, mining and industrial projects disproportionately affect Adivasi populations, forest-dwelling communities, fishing communities, small farmers and rural residents whose livelihoods depend on land, forests and water resources. Environmental impact assessments and clearance processes are often the only institutional mechanisms through which these communities can raise objections and participate in decision-making. Permitting post-facto clearances weakens these protections by allowing projects to become fait accompli before meaningful consultation can occur. Women within these communities frequently bear the heaviest burden, as environmental degradation directly affects access to water, fuel, food security and household livelihoods.

The judgment also signals a broader judicial shift from precautionary environmental protection towards regulatory flexibility and economic pragmatism. The original Vanashakti ruling reaffirmed a long-standing environmental principle: that development must comply with environmental safeguards before, not after, ecological harm is caused. By recalling that decision, the Court has created uncertainty regarding the enforceability of environmental law and weakened one of the most important checks on unlawful development. In a year marked by several constitutional decisions expanding rights and accountability, this judgment stands out as a significant retreat from the principles of environmental justice, precaution and sustainable development that have historically guided Indian environmental jurisprudence.

Detailed report may be read here.

Presidential reference dilutes judicial checks on governor and presidential delays

In November, in the Presidential Reference concerning Articles 200 and 201 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court substantially altered the position it had adopted earlier in the Tamil Nadu Governor case. The Constitution Bench held that Governors enjoy discretion while acting on Bills under Article 200 and are not bound by the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers when choosing whether to assent, withhold assent and return a Bill, or reserve it for the President’s consideration. The Court further held that neither the Governor’s decision under Article 200 nor the President’s decision under Article 201 is ordinarily justiciable. While courts may issue a limited mandamus in cases of prolonged and unexplained inaction, they cannot examine the merits of the constitutional functionaries’ decisions.

The Court also rejected the idea of judicially prescribed timelines for Governors and Presidents to act on Bills. Overruling key aspects of its earlier Tamil Nadu judgment, it held that the Constitution deliberately preserves flexibility in the legislative process and that courts cannot impose rigid deadlines where the Constitution itself is silent. The Court further clarified that the concept of “deemed assent” has no constitutional basis and that neither Article 142 nor any other constitutional provision permits courts to substitute the constitutional role assigned to the Governor or President in the legislative process.

The ruling significantly weakened democratic accountability and judicial oversight over constitutional authorities. By recognising broad governor discretion and removing enforceable timelines, the judgment arguably creates space for Governors to indefinitely delay legislation passed by elected State legislatures. This effectively revives the possibility of a “pocket veto” in practice, even if not in name. Given the increasing frequency of political confrontations between opposition-ruled States and Governors appointed by the Union Government, the judgment is seen as tilting the constitutional balance away from representative institutions and towards unelected constitutional offices.

The decision will have critical implications for Indian federalism. Earlier judicial interventions had sought to prevent Governors from obstructing legislative agendas endorsed by democratically elected governments. By treating governor’s discretion as largely insulated from judicial review and rejecting timelines altogether, the Court has weakened one of the few constitutional safeguards available to States against executive delay. It can be contended that the judgment places excessive faith in constitutional morality and convention despite repeated instances where constitutional offices have become sites of political contestation. In doing so, it may leave State legislatures with limited remedies when legislation concerning welfare, education, social justice, reservations, or other state policies remains stalled for prolonged periods without any meaningful constitutional accountability.

Detailed report may be read here.

Conclusion

Viewed together, the Supreme Court’s most consequential judgments of 2025 reveal a Court increasingly inclined towards institutional deference, procedural discipline and constitutional restraint. Again and again, the Court was confronted with opportunities to expand accountability, deepen rights protections or scrutinise the exercise of public power. Just as often, it chose a more cautious path.

In citizenship adjudication, documentary inconsistencies were allowed to outweigh the realities of poverty, migration and flawed record-keeping. In reservation jurisprudence, bureaucratic form triumphed over undisputed social identity. In the Assam encounter litigation, allegations involving the possible unlawful deprivation of life were acknowledged as grave, yet responsibility for investigation was ultimately shifted elsewhere. In the privacy judgment, constitutional concerns about surveillance within intimate relationships gave way to evidentiary considerations. In environmental law, the deterrent value of prior clearance requirements was diluted in favour of practical accommodation. In matters concerning waqf governance and gubernatorial powers, the Court displayed significant deference to legislative and constitutional authorities even where concerns regarding minority rights and democratic accountability were directly implicated. And in the Vantara litigation, finality and closure were prioritised over transparency and continuing public scrutiny.

What emerges is not a Court abandoning rights altogether, but one increasingly reluctant to place itself in direct confrontation with institutions of power. The recurring judicial instinct was not to aggressively police the boundaries of executive authority, administrative action or legislative policy, but to trust existing structures to function within constitutional limits. Whether in relation to the State, regulatory authorities, constitutional officeholders or investigative processes, the Court frequently preferred supervision at a distance over intervention at close quarters.

The difficulty with such an approach is that constitutional rights are rarely tested when institutions function perfectly. They matter most when institutions fail, when power is exercised disproportionately, when vulnerable communities cannot protect themselves, and when procedural neutrality masks deeper inequalities. It is in these moments that constitutional courts have historically played their most important role—not merely as interpreters of law, but as guardians against arbitrariness and as protectors of those who stand furthest from centres of power.

The lasting significance of these judgments therefore lies beyond their immediate facts. Collectively, they raise a larger question about the direction of constitutional adjudication in India. Is the Court entering an era defined primarily by restraint, deference and institutional trust? Or can constitutionalism continue to demand a more searching engagement with questions of inequality, accountability and rights protection? The answer will shape not only future jurisprudence but also the lived experience of citizenship, liberty, equality and democracy itself.

For that reason, the major judgments of 2025 should not be read merely as legal outcomes. They should be understood as constitutional signals—revealing how the Supreme Court increasingly sees its role in relation to power, governance and the protection of rights. Whether that vision ultimately strengthens or weakens constitutional democracy remains one of the most important questions these decisions leave behind.

Related:

Cracks in Environmental Jurisprudence: A study of central India’s High Courts

Guarding Liberty, Marking Limits: The Supreme Court’s defining judgments of 2025

The judiciary’s commitment to protecting rights: notable Supreme Court judgments of 2024

Ramifications of SC judgment on CCTVs in Police Stations

One step forward, two steps back: SC on Abortion rights

Mapping Gender-Based Violence in India: Trends, determinants, and institutional frameworks

Broadcasting Bias: CJP’s fight against hatred in Indian news

2023: India’s Bad Laws, what a weaponised state means for individual freedoms and indigenous rights

The post The Supreme Court in 2025: Deference, technicality and the retreat from rights appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The proceedings reveal a complex intersection of competing constitutional and governance concerns. On one hand lies the Court’s continuing concern regarding the rights of pedestrians, the accessibility of public spaces, and the obligation of public authorities to enforce existing laws regulating street vending. On the other hand lies the reality that the regulatory framework created by Parliament in 2014 to govern street vending has remained only partially implemented in Mumbai for more than a decade. The result is that many of the individuals who are now the subject of identification and enforcement exercises exist within a legal and administrative landscape shaped not merely by unlawful occupation of public spaces, but also by prolonged governmental failure to complete the statutory processes contemplated under the Street Vendors Act.

The Bombay High Court’s intervention must therefore be understood against a much broader historical backdrop. The present controversy is not simply about the existence of unauthorised hawkers. It is also about the consequences of a decade-long failure to fully implement a law that was specifically enacted to regulate street vending while protecting the livelihoods of some of India’s most economically vulnerable workers.

The regulatory framework and the incomplete implementation of the Street Vendors Act

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 represented a significant departure from earlier approaches to street vending. Prior to the enactment of the legislation, vendors across Indian cities often existed in a precarious legal position. Despite performing an essential economic function and serving millions of urban consumers, they were frequently treated as encroachers and subjected to eviction drives, confiscation of goods, harassment, and arbitrary displacement.

The Act sought to establish a more balanced framework. Rather than treating street vendors as a problem to be removed, Parliament recognised vending as a legitimate occupation and sought to regulate it through a system of surveys, registration, certification, designated vending zones, and representative Town Vending Committees. The legislation was premised on the understanding that public spaces could be managed in a manner that balanced urban planning concerns with the constitutional protection of livelihood.

The Town Vending Committee was intended to serve as the cornerstone of this framework. These committees were tasked with conducting surveys, identifying eligible vendors, issuing certificates of vending, recommending vending zones, and ensuring periodic review of the regulatory framework. Importantly, the Act contemplated that surveys would be conducted at regular intervals and that the regulatory system would remain responsive to changing urban realities.

In Mumbai, however, the implementation of the Act remained deeply uneven. Although surveys were initiated, subsequent stages of the process progressed slowly. Certification exercises remained incomplete, disputes arose regarding eligibility, and the functioning of Town Vending Committees became a recurring source of controversy. As a result, the comprehensive regulatory framework envisaged by Parliament never fully materialised. The consequences of these delays have become central to the present litigation.

The centrality of the 2014 survey and the status of 99,435 vendors

One of the most significant figures repeatedly referred to in the Bombay High Court proceedings is 99,435. This number derives from the survey conducted by the BMC following the enactment of the Street Vendors Act and has become the foundation of the Court’s recent directions, discussed below in detail, regarding identification and verification.

The significance of this figure cannot be understood without appreciating the broader statutory context. The survey was intended to form only one component of a larger regulatory process. It was expected that the information gathered during the survey would subsequently be used to determine eligibility, issue certificates, designate vending zones, and create a functioning regulatory system overseen by Town Vending Committees.

However, while approximately 99,435 applicants were surveyed, the larger statutory process remained incomplete. Many vendors who participated in the survey never received final vending certificates. Others continued to operate in a legal grey zone, possessing survey records or acknowledgements but lacking the formal documentation contemplated under the Act.

Vendor organisations have repeatedly argued that this prolonged administrative uncertainty created a category of workers whose relationship with the law remained unresolved. They were neither fully regularised nor formally excluded. Instead, they existed within a system that acknowledged their presence but failed to conclusively determine their legal status.

This unresolved situation became particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. Street vendor organisations repeatedly highlighted how incomplete implementation of the Act affected access to welfare schemes, financial assistance, and emergency relief measures. Many vendors were unable to access benefits because they lacked documentation that they had been waiting years to receive. Representatives of vendor unions pointed out that while tens of thousands had participated in official survey processes, only a small proportion had ultimately received formal recognition through certificates of vending.

Detailed report may be read here and here.

The present litigation therefore unfolds against the backdrop of a regulatory process that remains unfinished more than a decade after the enactment of the legislation.

The proceedings before Bombay High Court

The proceedings before the Bombay High Court arise from a long-running public interest litigation concerning the regulation of street vending, hawking and encroachments on roads, pavements and public spaces across Mumbai. The petition is rooted in persistent complaints that despite repeated judicial directions, large-scale unauthorised hawking continues to obstruct pedestrian movement, affect traffic circulation, impede access to railway stations, hospitals and public infrastructure, and undermine urban planning efforts. Over the years, the litigation has expanded into a broader examination of the implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, the functioning of Town Vending Committees (TVCs), the creation of vending and non-vending zones, the conduct of surveys of eligible vendors, and the responsibilities of multiple authorities including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai Police, Railways and the State Government. The Court has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with what it views as administrative inaction and the failure of authorities to establish an effective regulatory framework despite the existence of a statutory scheme.

The current phase of the litigation reflects the Court’s growing dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of municipal and police authorities in regulating street vending across Mumbai. During successive hearings, the Court examined affidavits and compliance reports submitted by the BMC and other authorities detailing enforcement actions undertaken against unauthorised hawkers. However, photographs and materials placed before the Court frequently suggested that locations identified for special monitoring continued to witness significant vending activity despite repeated eviction drives.

The Court consequently began questioning whether existing enforcement efforts were producing any meaningful or lasting results. Particular concern was expressed regarding the apparent reappearance of vendors shortly after eviction operations had concluded. According to the Court, the issue was not merely the removal of vendors but the inability of public authorities to prevent the repeated reoccupation of the same spaces.

This concern became a recurring theme across several hearings. The Court repeatedly questioned why vendors who had been removed from specific locations appeared able to return almost immediately despite the presence of municipal authorities and police personnel. The judges also expressed concern regarding the apparent disconnect between the assurances provided in court and conditions observed on the ground.

The Court increasingly viewed the issue as one involving institutional accountability. Municipal authorities pointed to challenges associated with enforcement and reoccupation. Police authorities referred to limitations arising from municipal responsibilities. The Court, however, repeatedly emphasised that the continued shifting of responsibility between agencies could not justify the persistence of conditions that had been the subject of litigation for years.

The proceedings thus gradually evolved from a discussion regarding individual instances of encroachment into a broader examination of governance failures and administrative accountability.

• October 2025: The Court signals that assurances are no longer enough

The proceedings in this petition intensified significantly during the hearing held on October 22, 2025. By this stage, the BMC had already informed the Court that it had identified twenty locations across Mumbai for focused action and monitoring. Municipal authorities asserted that steps were being taken to remove unauthorised hawkers and prevent their return.

However, photographs placed before the Court painted a different picture. Images of the area immediately outside the Bombay High Court showed that hawkers continued to occupy spaces despite repeated assurances regarding enforcement.

The Court expressed clear dissatisfaction with the situation. Justice Gadkari observed that despite repeated directions and solemn assurances from authorities, unauthorised hawkers continued to maintain a significant presence across the city. The Bench indicated that it would no longer be satisfied with general statements regarding enforcement and would instead insist upon measurable compliance.

Specific stretches, including the area from Flora Fountain to Horniman Circle, were placed under direct scrutiny. Municipal officials and police authorities were directed to ensure that these locations remained free from unauthorised hawking. The Court’s approach reflected a growing belief that the problem was not the absence of legal powers but the failure to exercise them effectively.

• November 2025: The Court expands the inquiry across Mumbai

The hearing in November 2025 marked an important shift in the Court’s approach. The issue was no longer treated as confined to a handful of locations. Instead, the Court began examining the broader condition of public spaces across Mumbai.

The Bench remarked that there appeared to be virtually no commercial district, market area or railway precinct in the city that remained unaffected by hawking. The judges questioned submissions suggesting that police personnel could not verify whether vendors possessed licences or authorisations. The Court pointed out that there was nothing preventing officers from demanding documentation and taking action against unauthorised vendors.

A recurring concern during the hearing was the phenomenon of reoccupation. According to the Court, the central problem was not merely that vendors were being removed; it was that they were returning almost immediately after enforcement operations concluded.

The Court identified twenty major locations across the city—including railway station precincts, Colaba Causeway, Linking Road, Hill Road, Mohammad Ali Road, Kurla, Ghatkopar and the route between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and the High Court—for continuous monitoring and enforcement, as per LiveLaw.

The hearing reflected the Court’s emerging view that the problem was systemic and required sustained institutional intervention rather than sporadic eviction drives.

• December 2025: Questions regarding political and administrative will

The Court’s frustration became more pronounced during the December 2025 hearing. The immediate trigger was the continued presence of hawkers in the vicinity of the High Court despite previous directions and the existence of a nearby police chowki. The judges openly questioned whether the State intended to comply with judicial directions at all.

Justice Gadkari remarked that the State needed to clarify whether it intended to enforce the law or permit citizens to act as they pleased. The Court also rejected suggestions that the issue should be viewed solely through the lens of vendors’ rights. While acknowledging that street vendors possess constitutional protections, the Bench emphasised that pedestrians and ordinary residents also possess rights that require protection, as per LiveLaw.

A particularly significant observation concerned the temporary clearance of the area during the swearing-in ceremony of the Chief Minister. The Court noted that authorities had demonstrated their capacity to clear the area when required but had failed to maintain those conditions thereafter. This observation reinforced the Court’s growing conviction that the persistence of the problem was not merely a question of capacity but one of sustained commitment.

• March and April 2026: The Court turns to the state’s failure to implement the act

The hearings during early 2026 marked another significant development. The Court increasingly shifted its focus from immediate enforcement failures to the larger question of why the Street Vendors Act had not been fully implemented despite having been enacted more than a decade earlier.

The most pointed criticism emerged during the hearing on April 28, 2026. When the Maharashtra Government produced a Government Resolution outlining future steps for implementation of the Act, the Court reacted sharply.

Justice Gadkari repeatedly questioned what authorities had been doing since 2014. The Bench described the Government Resolution as little more than an “eyewash” and “lip service,” observing that the State appeared to be creating implementation frameworks that should have existed years earlier, as reported by LiveLaw.

The Court was equally dismissive of statistics indicating that action had been taken against approximately 9,000 illegal hawkers. Pointing out that estimates suggested the presence of several lakh vendors across Mumbai, the Bench observed that the figures presented by the State addressed only a small fraction of the larger issue.

The hearing also highlighted concerns regarding intimidation faced by citizens who reported illegal hawking. References were made to threats, violence and retaliation against complainants. Justice Khata observed that many residents had effectively lost faith in the willingness of authorities to act.

The Court repeatedly emphasised that sufficient legal powers already existed and that the problem lay in implementation rather than legislative inadequacy.

The order may be read here.

• May 2026: The shift from enforcement to identification

The hearings conducted during May 2026 marked a significant transformation in the nature of the proceedings. Until this point, the Court’s primary concern had been enforcement. Increasingly, however, the focus shifted toward identification and verification.

The Court began examining how authorities could distinguish between vendors who formed part of the surveyed population and those operating outside the recognised framework. This discussion coincided with concerns raised regarding alleged undocumented foreign nationals, particularly Bangladeshi nationals, engaged in vending activities.

The BMC informed the Court that alleged foreign nationals residing illegally in India could not be permitted to engage in hawking and that verification exercises were necessary to identify such persons.

The Court’s response was to direct the creation of a comprehensive identification system based upon the 2014 survey database. QR-code-based identity cards were ordered for all 99,435 surveyed vendors.

The Court clarified that the issuance of identity cards would not create legal rights or confer recognition beyond existing entitlements. Rather, the purpose was to facilitate identification and distinguish surveyed vendors from persons operating outside the recognised framework.

When the BMC sought additional time for implementation, the Court expressed impatience. Justice Gadkari observed that the issue had persisted for years and that authorities could not continue to seek extensions while illegal activities allegedly continued. The Bench even suggested that the State Government allocate funds necessary to expedite the process.

The Court also directed the creation of citizen-reporting mechanisms, including dedicated WhatsApp systems, online portals and email addresses through which complaints regarding illegal hawking could be submitted.

The order may be read here.

• June 2026: Questions regarding the survey database

The hearing conducted on June 10, 2026 introduced a new dimension to the proceedings by raising questions regarding the reliability of the very database upon which the ongoing identification exercise is based.

Information placed before the Court suggested that certain individuals included within the 2014 survey records may not have been genuine hawkers and may instead have been shop owners who obtained inclusion through incorrect documentation. The Court treated these allegations seriously and directed that they be examined through an inquiry supervised by senior police officials.

This development is significant because it demonstrates that the process of verification is not limited to identifying persons outside the survey database. It also extends to examining the integrity of the database itself.

The allegations suggest that questions remain regarding the accuracy of records generated during the original survey exercise. If those records are now being used as the basis for determining legitimacy, then the reliability of the underlying data inevitably assumes considerable importance.

The June hearing therefore highlighted a broader challenge confronting the ongoing exercise. The task is not merely to distinguish surveyed vendors from unsurveyed vendors. It is also to ensure that the records being relied upon are themselves accurate and capable of supporting regulatory decisions with significant consequences for livelihoods.

The order may be read here.

The shift in the Court’s perspective

• How It Began: Public spaces, pedestrian rights, and constitutional concerns

A central feature of the Court’s reasoning, prior to May, has been its concern regarding the rights of pedestrians and the accessibility of public spaces. Throughout the proceedings, the Court has repeatedly emphasised that roads, footpaths and public areas exist primarily for public use and that authorities possess an obligation to ensure that citizens are able to access them safely and freely. Particular attention has been paid to the condition of footpaths and public thoroughfares in major commercial districts and around railway stations.

The Court has expressed concern that large sections of Mumbai’s public spaces have effectively become inaccessible to pedestrians because of encroachments and unauthorised vending activities. According to the Court, this situation raises questions not merely of urban management but also of constitutional governance.

In several hearings, the Bench linked the issue to broader concerns regarding the right to move freely and the obligation of public authorities to protect public infrastructure intended for common use. The judges repeatedly observed that the State cannot abdicate its responsibility to regulate public spaces and that continued inaction ultimately affects the rights of ordinary citizens. These concerns formed the foundation of the Court’s insistence upon stricter enforcement measures and closer monitoring of compliance.

• What It Became: The shift towards identification and verification

It is crucial to highlight that the recent 2026 proceedings have been about the Court’s increasing emphasis on identification and verification as mechanisms for regulating street vending. Earlier hearings focused primarily upon questions of encroachment and enforcement. More recent proceedings, however, have increasingly concentrated on distinguishing authorised vendors from unauthorised ones. This shift has been accompanied by directions requiring authorities to verify the identities of vendors and establish mechanisms capable of determining who falls within the recognised survey population.

The Court ultimately directed the BMC to undertake an exercise involving the issuance of QR-code-based identification cards to the 99,435 vendors included in the 2014 survey database. According to the Court, such a system would enable authorities to identify surveyed vendors and distinguish them from persons operating outside the recognised framework.

The BMC subsequently informed the Court that it had commenced the process of contacting and verifying the surveyed vendors. During the June 2026 hearing, municipal authorities indicated that the exercise remained ongoing and that additional time would be required to complete contact and verification procedures involving the entire surveyed population.

The Court has also directed the establishment of mechanisms through which members of the public can report instances of alleged illegal hawking. These measures include dedicated online portals, email addresses and WhatsApp-based complaint systems intended to facilitate direct reporting by citizens.

From a legal perspective, the State undoubtedly possesses the authority to investigate and act against persons residing unlawfully within India. However, the incorporation of migration-related concerns into litigation concerning street vending introduces a number of additional constitutional and policy considerations.

Street vending has historically been associated with economically vulnerable populations, including internal migrants, religious minorities, and workers employed within the informal economy. In recent years, several parts of the country have witnessed attempts to frame questions of livelihood, documentation and market participation through broader narratives concerning migration, citizenship and national security.

Consequently, the increasing emphasis upon identity verification raises important questions regarding the safeguards that will govern implementation. Verification exercises may be lawful and necessary for regulatory purposes, but they must remain grounded in evidence and due process. The distinction between lawful verification and profiling becomes particularly significant when questions of citizenship and migration become intertwined with questions of livelihood.

The implementation of the Court’s directions will therefore require careful attention to procedural fairness and constitutional protections.

The unaddressed issues 

• The Missing Conversation: Livelihood, informality and the original purpose of the Street Vendors Act

One striking feature of the Bombay High Court proceedings is the relative absence of sustained engagement with the livelihoods question that lies at the heart of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. Much of the litigation has centred on encroachments, pedestrian mobility, enforcement failures, unauthorised hawking and, more recently, identity verification. Yet the legislation itself was enacted because Parliament recognised that street vending is not merely an issue of urban management but one of livelihood, survival and economic justice. The Act emerged from decades of judicial intervention and policy reform aimed at ending the treatment of vendors as illegal occupants and recognising them instead as legitimate economic actors whose right to work required legal protection alongside reasonable regulation of public spaces.

The present dispute exposes the consequences of the State’s prolonged failure to implement that legislative vision. The fact that nearly 99,435 vendors were surveyed but large numbers remained trapped in administrative limbo for years illustrates a deeper institutional failure. These are not individuals operating entirely outside the system; they participated in official surveys, were recorded by public authorities and entered statutory processes that were never fully completed. The result has been persistent insecurity, leaving vendors vulnerable to eviction drives, confiscation of goods, extortion, loss of income and arbitrary exclusion from public spaces. These vulnerabilities became especially visible during the Covid-19 pandemic, when thousands of vendors across India struggled to access welfare measures precisely because the regulatory framework intended to formalise and protect their status remained incompletely implemented. Against this backdrop, the central question before Mumbai is not simply how to remove unauthorised hawkers, but whether the city can finally establish a regulatory regime that protects livelihoods while regulating public space in the manner Parliament originally intended, rather than perpetuating the cycle of enforcement, litigation and uncertainty that has characterised the past decade.

• Citizenship, identity and the risk of communalisation

The Bombay High Court’s emphasis on identification, verification and the removal of unauthorised vendors cannot be viewed in isolation from broader national developments in which questions of trade, livelihood and public space have increasingly become entangled with questions of religion, citizenship and belonging. Over recent years, Muslim vendors across several states have faced organised economic boycott campaigns, exclusion from markets, demands for identity disclosure and allegations linking their commercial activities to public health threats, demographic anxieties or national security concerns. During and after the Covid-19 pandemic, public campaigns urged consumers not to purchase goods from Muslim traders; villages in parts of Madhya Pradesh displayed banners barring Muslim vendors; political leaders publicly called for avoiding purchases from Muslim traders; and Muslim vendors were repeatedly subjected to suspicion and exclusion based solely on identity.

Equally significant has been the rise of informal and extra-legal identity policing. In several instances, private actors and vigilante groups have demanded identity documents, compelled traders to reveal their religious identities, pressured businesses to display religious markers, and effectively assumed functions reserved for lawful authorities. The experiences of Kashmiri traders across Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere demonstrate how quickly livelihood questions can become questions of citizenship and belonging, with vendors facing assaults, forced document checks, expulsion from localities, economic boycotts and accusations of disloyalty or terrorism. It is within this broader context that concerns arise regarding large-scale verification exercises involving Mumbai’s vendors. The Constitution undoubtedly permits lawful verification and enforcement against unauthorised activities. What it does not permit is collective suspicion, religious profiling or the transfer of verification powers to private actors. As Mumbai moves towards identifying and regulating nearly one lakh surveyed vendors, the constitutional challenge is not merely administrative. It is ensuring that verification remains a neutral legal exercise rather than becoming a mechanism through which broader anxieties about identity, migration and belonging determine who is considered entitled to participate in the city’s economic life.

The risks are not merely hypothetical. In November and December of 2025, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed a complaint before the Maharashtra Director General of Police and the National Commission for Minorities after a former BJYM functionary allegedly conducted Aadhaar checks of Muslim fruit vendors at Mumbai’s Malabar Hill market while reportedly asking Hindu vendors to display saffron flags on their carts. According to the complaint, Muslim vendors were selectively required to produce identity documents, described as potential “security threats” and subjected to public scrutiny despite the absence of any legal authority to conduct such verification. CJP argued that the incident reflected a growing pattern of extra-legal identity policing in which private individuals assume state functions and transform ordinary commercial spaces into sites of religious verification and exclusion. The episode serves as a reminder that, in the absence of robust safeguards, questions of documentation and legality can rapidly acquire communal dimensions, making the manner in which Mumbai conducts its verification process as important as the exercise itself. 

Detailed report may be read here.

A case about more than hawkers

What has emerged before the Bombay High Court over the course of these proceedings is not merely a dispute concerning street vendors occupying pavements and public roads. The litigation has evolved into a broader examination of how Indian cities govern public space, how welfare-oriented legislation is implemented, and how the State manages competing claims relating to livelihoods, legality, urban order and citizenship.

The Court has undoubtedly exposed serious administrative failures. Through repeated hearings, it has highlighted the inability of municipal authorities and police agencies to develop a consistent and durable regulatory response to street vending. It has questioned a pattern of cyclical enforcement in which vendors are removed, compliance reports are filed, and the same locations are subsequently reoccupied. It has also forced public authorities to confront uncomfortable questions regarding the implementation of a statute that was enacted more than a decade ago but remains only partially realised.

Yet the proceedings simultaneously reveal a deeper contradiction at the heart of the present controversy. For years, the State failed to complete the very processes through which the legality of street vending was supposed to be determined. Surveys were conducted, databases were created and statutory mechanisms were established, but the larger framework contemplated by the Street Vendors Act remained unfinished. The current effort to distinguish between authorised and unauthorised vendors is therefore taking place within a system whose foundational processes were themselves left incomplete.

This contradiction lies at the centre of the present litigation. The problem confronting Mumbai is not solely the existence of unauthorised hawking. It is also the consequence of a regulatory regime that was never fully implemented despite clear statutory mandates. Many of the enforcement challenges now highlighted by the Court are inseparable from that history.

The significance of the case consequently extends well beyond questions of encroachment. It raises fundamental questions about the capacity of public institutions to implement social legislation, the limits of enforcement-based governance, and the role of identification and documentation in determining access to livelihoods in contemporary India. It also raises important questions about how cities balance the rights of pedestrians and residents with the economic realities of millions of informal workers who depend upon public spaces for survival.

As the litigation continues, its legacy is likely to be measured not merely by the number of hawkers removed from particular roads or footpaths. Its enduring significance may lie in whether it succeeds in prompting the creation of a regulatory framework that is lawful, transparent and effective while remaining faithful to the constitutional commitment to dignity, livelihood and equal treatment. In that sense, the proceedings have become a debate not simply about hawkers, but about the future of urban citizenship itself and the place of informal workers within India’s rapidly transforming cities.

Conclusion: A test of constitutional governance in the city

The Bombay High Court’s hawkers litigation has ultimately exposed a reality that extends far beyond pavements, encroachments and municipal enforcement. At its heart lies a fundamental governance failure: more than a decade after Parliament enacted the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, Mumbai is still attempting to determine who is entitled to vend, where they may vend, and under what conditions. The Court’s frustration is therefore not directed merely at the presence of hawkers on public roads, but at the inability of public institutions to implement a statutory framework that was specifically designed to regulate them.

The proceedings reveal two competing truths that must be reconciled. The first is that public spaces cannot be surrendered to unregulated occupation. Footpaths, roads, railway approaches and civic infrastructure exist for public use, and the State has a constitutional obligation to ensure that they remain accessible, safe and functional. The second is that street vendors are not simply encroachers. They are workers operating within one of India’s largest informal economies, many of whom entered official surveys, participated in statutory processes and spent years awaiting the recognition and protections promised by law. Any attempt to address the former while ignoring the latter risks reducing a complex governance challenge to a narrow law-and-order problem.

What makes the present litigation particularly significant is the contradiction it has brought into sharp focus. The State is now seeking to distinguish between authorised and unauthorised vendors through records generated by a regulatory process that was itself left incomplete. Many of the enforcement difficulties highlighted by the Court today are inseparable from years of administrative delay, institutional inertia and partial implementation of the very legislation intended to resolve them. The crisis confronting Mumbai is therefore not merely one of illegal hawking; it is also the consequence of a regulatory framework that remained unfinished despite clear statutory mandates.

The Court’s recent turn towards identification and verification adds another layer of complexity. Verification may be a legitimate and necessary tool of regulation. However, its constitutional legitimacy will ultimately depend on the safeguards that accompany it. In a climate where questions of documentation, migration, citizenship and belonging increasingly shape public discourse, the distinction between lawful verification and social profiling becomes critically important. The challenge before authorities is not simply to identify vendors, but to ensure that processes designed to enforce legality do not become instruments of exclusion, discrimination or collective suspicion.

The enduring significance of this litigation will therefore not be measured by the number of hawkers removed from a particular road or market. It will be measured by whether Mumbai finally succeeds in building the regulatory system envisioned by Parliament in 2014: one that protects public spaces without criminalising poverty, regulates economic activity without destroying livelihoods, and enforces legality through transparent procedures rather than administrative improvisation. The question before the city is not simply who may sell goods on its pavements. It is whether urban governance in India can remain faithful to constitutional commitments of dignity, equality and livelihood while responding to the genuine demands of order, planning and public accountability. In that sense, this case is not merely about hawkers. It is about whether constitutional governance can succeed where a decade of institutional failure has not.

Related:

Censorship After NEET: A substitute for accountability

Court convicts seven men in 2022 cow-vigilantism lynching case; holds mob lynching proven, awards life imprisonment

The Supreme Court in 2025: When procedure trumped principle

Cleanliness or cultural policing? Varanasi to relocate 350-400 meat shops

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

The post Who owns Mumbai’s streets? The Bombay High Court, street vendors and a decade of regulatory failure appeared first on SabrangIndia.

For me, what I can see is that as soon as the Trinamool lost power in Bengal, those 20 representatives of people who fought on the plank of the Trinamool shifted their allegiance to NDA. That is the objective truth. The reasons i.e., whether they shifted their allegiance due to a fear of getting hounded by the ED, or due to there being no reason to be obedient to the Trinamool leadership anymore or due to the change in their own value system which now pushes them to support NDA, these could be multiple. Irrespective of the reasons, this article tries to understand the implications of this shift or any shift of political allegiances for that matter for the Indian polity, what it means for our Constitutional Democracy and where does the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution sit in all of this.

The framers wrote no anti-defection provision into the document that took effect in 1950. This was less an oversight than a reflection of the assumptions of the age. The very term “political party” did not appear in the original Constitution; the framers conceived of Parliament as an assembly of representatives, not as a battlefield of disciplined party blocs. India had borrowed the Westminster model, in which party loyalty was a matter of political convention rather than constitutional law and where a member who “crossed the floor” answered to his conscience and his constituents.

There was a deeper philosophical inheritance too. The Burkean ideal of the representative — the member who owes the electorate his judgement and not merely his obedience — sat comfortably with a freedom movement whose leaders had been chosen for their moral standing. In the first decade after independence, defection was rare until the Congress started to lose the states. The four years between 1967 and 1971 saw 142 defections in Parliament and 1,969 in the state assemblies. Thirty-two governments collapsed and 212 defectors were rewarded with ministerial berths. Roughly half of the nearly four thousand legislators elected in 1967 and 1971 changed sides at least once. The link between the vote and the seat had broken.

It was this period, often called the era of “Aaya Ram Gaya Ram” politics, that turned defection from an occasional embarrassment into a structural crisis. The phrase itself came from a Haryana legislator who switched parties three times in a single day in 1967, and it entered popular vocabulary as shorthand for the mercenary nature of Indian legislative politics. Governments were being made and unmade in backroom negotiations, with ministerships traded like commodities. The democratic process, in effect, had been reduced to the first act of a play whose second act was written entirely by party managers and power brokers. The public mandate, once given, seemed to dissolve the moment the results were declared.

How the Tenth Schedule came to be?

Following the report of the Y. B. Chavan committee, two separate legislative attempts, both unsuccessful, were made to find a solution to defections. The first was made by Indira Gandhi’s home minister, Uma Shankar Dikshit, in 1973; the second, in 1978, by Shanti Bhushan, minister for law and justice in the Janata Party government of Morarji Desai. It was only in 1985, under Rajiv Gandhi’s government, that the Fifty-second Amendment inserted the Tenth Schedule. Its purpose was to address the culture of defections.

The mechanism was simple. A legislator would be disqualified if he voluntarily gave up the membership of his party or if he voted or abstained against the direction of his party whip. Two escape hatches were built in: a “split” involving one-third of the legislative party and a “merger” involving two-thirds. The split provision became the law’s most exploited loophole, and the 91st Amendment of the Indian Constitution (2003) removed it, leaving only the two-thirds merger.

Essentially, it is a constitutional provision engineered to discourage defections from one party to another, of legislators, except when an overwhelming majority of the legislators, as decided by the upper echelons of the party decide to merge with another parliamentary party. How does the schedule decide if someone switched sides or not? One, if the member voluntarily relinquishes the membership of the political party he was elected from. Two, when she does not vote according to the whip of the political party. The politics of power ensured that much interpretation happens on this schedule. Additionally, the fact that it is the speaker who decides whether an elected representative becomes disqualified or not has made it easier for ruling parties to mend the schedule to fit their whims. A very brief jurisprudential history of the tenth schedule is necessary before a systematic analysis of the philosophy behind it is done

In Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu (1992), a five-judge bench upheld the law by a 3:2 majority, held that courts could intervene only after the Speaker passed a final order, and only on narrow grounds such as mala fides or violation of natural justice. In Ravi S. Naik vs. Union of India (1994) the Court held that “voluntarily giving up membership” need not mean a formal resignation; it can be inferred from conduct. In Rajendra Singh Rana v. Swamy Prasad Maurya(2007) it held that a Speaker’s prolonged inaction is itself open to review. In Keisham Meghachandra Singh vs. Speaker, Manipur Legislative Assembly (2020) it suggested a three-month deadline and openly questioned whether the Speaker should be the adjudicator at all, recommending that Parliament consider a permanent tribunal headed by a retired judge. In Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary (2023), arising from the Shiv Sena split, it held that the Governor had no business ordering a floor test on the material before him, and that the whip belongs to the political party rather than to the legislature party.

The most recent chapter unfolded in Telangana, and it is the clearest indictment yet. In Padi Kaushik Reddy v. State of Telangana (2025), the Supreme Court held that a Speaker acting as a tribunal under the Tenth Schedule enjoys no constitutional immunity under Articles 122 or 212, and must decide within three months. Yet when the Telangana Speaker finally conducted his in-camera hearings, he dismissed the petitions and cleared the BRS legislators who had joined the Congress, finding no “conclusive documentary or legally sustainable evidence” of defection. How could he? He was elected to the legislature on a Congress ticket. He is neither accountable to the people nor to the court and in that case, it is naïve to expect the speaker to decide in any other way than in ways favoring the existing ruling party.

So, essentially, people can get disqualified but if the speaker deems so, they will not be. The judicial review on the decision of speaker does not have a wide scope. This is the result of the jurisprudence on the tenth schedule until now.

What emerges from this jurisprudential arc is a portrait of an institution trying, case by case, to patch the cracks of a fundamentally compromised design. The judiciary has steadily expanded the grounds for intervention — from conduct-based inference in Ravi S. Naik, to review of inaction in Rajendra Singh Rana, to stripping constitutional immunity in Padi Kaushik Reddy — and yet each judicial correction has only showed how little the law’s original architecture can bear the weight placed upon it. The courts have been forced into the role of reformers precisely because the schedule’s own enforcement mechanism, the Speaker, has repeatedly failed the test of impartiality. This pattern of judicial expansion and executive evasion provides the necessary context for asking the deeper question: what, structurally, makes the Tenth Schedule so easy to circumvent?

Now, we need to, in the context of this knowledge, question, examine, analyse and understand what it is that power defections despite a strong constitutional safeguard against it? There can be many explanations but two should come on top. One, that Tenth Schedule is inadequate in its strength to carry out its endeavour and it is prone to huge exploitation. Second, the Tenth Schedule is being made powerless by institutional ignorance of political realities of India and such powerlessness of the Schedule has created buffers where the ruling political apparatus can operate with impunity.

Inadequacy of the Tenth Schedule

If one reads a single election result-day newspaper and the Tenth Schedule, for the first time, one will easily understand the issue with the Schedule. The Schedule disqualifies those who defect and gives on exception where 2/3 of the members merge, as stated before. Now, when has it ever been the case that a ruling party speaker had to decide something and he/she did so in detriment to the ruling party? In the absence of such convention, the Tenth Schedule added in 1985, places the responsibility on the Speaker to be impartial. There would even be cases in which his own chair will be in danger if he decides in favour the party from which people have defected. The logic behind putting speaker at the centre of the system was not a prudent choice.

The Speaker problem, however, is only one face of the schedule’s inadequacy. Equally troubling is the merger exception itself. By permitting two-thirds of a legislative party to merge with another without attracting disqualification, the schedule inadvertently creates a perverse incentive i.e., rather than discouraging defection, it rewards it so long as it is done at sufficient scale. The very evil the law was designed to cure i.e., the wholesale shifting of political allegiance for the spoils of power, is precisely what the merger clause facilitates when a critical mass can be assembled. What was conceived as a safety valve for genuine ideological realignment has, in practice, become the preferred route for engineered political takeovers. And this structural vulnerability is the mechanism through which the TMC merger described at the outset of this article was made possible.

The whip and the death of debate

Because a legislator must vote as the whip directs on pain of disqualification, he is reduced to a voting machine for the party high command. His conscience, his constituency, and the deliberative function of the legislature are all subordinated to the leadership. The MP or MLA ends up representing neither the nation nor the voters of his constituency but only his political party. A law sold as a defence of democracy has, in practice, hollowed out the independence of the average legislator and concentrated power at the top.

Say for example, take the recent defector who went from TMC to the NCPI- Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar—the MP from Barasat, West Bengal. Imagine if all the electors of Barasat decide that Kakoli Ghosh should in fact support the NDA on the Delimitation Bill, should she not support the NDA? If this scenario occurs, the Tenth Schedule would stand as an impediment to the realisation of people’s goals. If the whip of TMC issues a diktat that all Members of the Parliamentary party shall vote against, Kakoli would be facing a disorienting dilemma—whether to vote for the bill and betray her party or vote against the bill and betray her constituency. Am I trying to say that Tenth Schedule is an impediment to functioning of democracy? No. Let that be clear. However, I am saying that the Tenth Schedule does not anticipate this sort of situation where a representative is understood beyond the party from which they won. Its binary nature, where a representative either obeys the party or disobeys it is too narrow to contain and engage with the intricacies of the Indian electoral politics.

Moreover, there is no way to know whether the electors of Barasat want Kakoli to vote one way or the other in case of any bill. One could argue that the BJP winning majority assembly constituencies in the Barasat Lok Sabha is an indication of the support however, this specific question was not asked to the electorate for us to assume it to be its decision. The constitution, as dynamic and foresighted as it is, has no provisions to understand the will of the people, especially when it seems to be changing in between the election cycle.

Does this mean the Tenth Schedule should not exist? No. It should. The material reality of realpolitik today is that there are resort politics where MLAs and MPs are threatened and wrongfully restrained and are traded across parties. Add to the mix the unholy duo of CBI and ED ready at the command of ruling establishment, institutional support is mandatory for the representatives of people, as ironic as it sounds. The Tenth Schedule in its current form does not give such institutional protection. What it merely does is add a step of buying more MLAs or MPs, for whoever wants to topple governments or merge parties.

In essence, the Tenth Schedule is inadequate in more than one way. On one hand, it does not have the institutional apparatus to engage with real change of values and ideas, real debate between members of parliament, belonging to the same party. It essentially says, if you as a Member of Parliament or the Member of Legislative Assembly have any differences with the party you won from, you better settle them at the headquarters of the Party rather than coming with them to the legislature.  This inadequacy serves as a tool in the hands of political parties to divide the house into fewer parts than when it would be divided into if the members were left to their own means or with minimal whip control.

On the other hand, it leaves a big hole in its own regime. While it might be hard to convince a good 60 MPs, it is rather easy, as can be seen, to convince or somehow make 20 MPs of a smaller party to support the ruling government. This becomes a cakewalk when the decision-making power is vested in speaker, a defacto appointee of the ruling government and by extension, the party.

How to fix this?

The remedies have been on the table for decades. Some suggest a narrowing of the scope of the whip. They argue that limiting it to votes that genuinely threaten the survival of a government, namely confidence motions and money bills, and freeing legislators to vote their conscience on everything else will be a better appreciation of the Westminster model of the government.

Another suggestion is to take the decision away from the Speaker and place it in an independent authority like the President or Governor acting on the binding advice of the Election Commission, as the Dinesh Goswami Committee recommended in 1990, or a permanent tribunal headed by a retired judge, as the Supreme Court suggested in Keisham (2020).

While these suggestions are noteworthy and require a serious consideration, it is necessary to note the rot in the Indian electoral politics wherein no amount of freedom can have many of the legislators act with conscience. They all require contracts, tie-ups with big businesses and maintenance of their riches in their own constituencies. This is not a version of ‘cynic-speak’ but a reality that we face today. Many of the members of Parliament have business interests that align and meet with political interests. The average assets of ruling BJP MPs today are Rs. 50 Crore and the opposition Congress MPs’ average assets are Rs. 22 Crore and over 100 MPs’ assets grew by 110% between 2014-2024. To assume that they will use their free conscience is imprudent. Moreover, there are hardly any institutions left in this country where the ruling establishment has not put its hand into and has not started to control. From interpretation of the law to enforcement of the law, from preparation for elections to conduct of elections, the institutions are under a threat of unimaginable proportion. Therefore, if institutions like the President, or the Governor or the Election Commission are to be trusted with the enforcement of a renewed Tenth Schedule, they would not yield any drastically different and positive results than what we have today.

Until now, the discussion has been this. A lot of legislators have been jumping ship. The Tenth Schedule which was brought in to stop exactly that is failing on multiple fronts. One, it is not able to foster a healthy debate between members of parliament due to its archaic notion of party loyalty. Two, it is not able to stop the mass defections, evidently, from one party to another to the extent of destabilising governments and changing popular mandates. For us to somehow put trust in supposedly independent institutions like the President or the Election Commissions to enforce the Tenth Schedule would be imprudent given how their powers are being taken over and how they are becoming mere extensions of the executive.

What is to be done then?

The honest answer begins with admitting that no single institutional fix will suffice, because the problem is not only with the institutions. The issue is rooted in the very relationship between the voter, the representative, and the party. The Tenth Schedule attempted to regulate that relationship from above, by threatening disqualification. What it did not do, and what no amendment since has attempted, is to restructure the relationship from below i.e., by giving the electorate a continuing stake in the conduct of its representative.

We do not have a recall mechanism. Once elected, a legislator is answerable to no one for five years. Not to the voters who sent her to the legislature, not to any independent body tasked with monitoring her fidelity to the mandate on which she sought votes. The Tenth Schedule fills this vacuum by substituting party discipline for popular accountability, but party discipline, as we have seen, is itself a currency that can be bought and sold. A recall provision, carefully designed to prevent its misuse as a tool of harassment by ruling parties, would fundamentally alter the calculus of defection. A legislator contemplating a switch would have to weigh not merely the Speaker’s likely indulgence or the party’s ability to engineer a merger, but the concrete possibility that her own constituents could unseat her for betraying the mandate. The recall would not need to be easy to trigger. A high threshold of signatures, a mandatory cooling-off period, and supervision by the judiciary rather than the executive would prevent frivolous attempts but its mere existence would reintroduce the voter into a process from which the Tenth Schedule has, paradoxically, excluded them entirely.

The second structural reform, without which any amendment to the Tenth Schedule will remain cosmetic, is the statutory regulation of intra-party democracy. Indian political parties are, with rare and partial exceptions, autocracies. Decisions about candidate selection, whip issuance, alliance formation, and merger are taken by a small coterie at the top, often by a single leader whose authority within the party is unquestioned. The Tenth Schedule, by making disqualification contingent on obedience to the whip, effectively constitutionalises this autocracy. It converts the internal hierarchy of a private political organisation into a binding legal obligation on a public constitutional office-holder. If we are serious about the deliberative function of the legislature, we must first be serious about the deliberative function within parties themselves. A law mandating regular internal elections, transparent candidate selection processes, and a formal mechanism by which legislators can dissent from the whip without facing expulsion, a kind of intra-party conscience vote, would do more to restore the dignity of the individual legislator than any tinkering with the schedule’s merger arithmetic.

None of these reforms will emerge from the political class voluntarily. The irony of the Tenth Schedule is that any amendment to it must pass through the very legislature whose members benefit from its weakness. This is not a counsel of despair but a recognition that constitutional reform in India has always required pressure from outside the legislature, from the judiciary, from civil society, from the press, and from the slow but real force of public opinion. The Right to Information Act did not emerge because politicians wanted transparency; it emerged because citizens demanded it. The reform of the Tenth Schedule, if it comes, will follow a similar path.

A final word on what we owe ourselves

There is a temptation, when confronted with the scale of institutional decay, to conclude that the system is beyond repair and that the only rational response is cynicism. This temptation must be resisted, not because the system is working (it manifestly is not) but because cynicism is itself a form of complicity. Every time we shrug at a mass defection, every time we treat the engineering of a merger as just another episode of Indian politics, we normalise the very evil the Tenth Schedule was written to combat. The twenty Trinamool MPs who crossed over did not act in a vacuum. They acted in a political culture that has, over decades, made such crossings routine, predictable, and consequence-free. Changing that culture requires better laws, a more demanding electorate, and one that treats a defection not as a fait accompli but as a breach of trust serious enough to end a political career.

The Tenth Schedule’s purpose remains legitimate. However, a law that was designed to protect democracy has, through its design flaws, its capture by partisan Speakers, and its inability to engage with the economic and structural realities of Indian politics, become a tool for its subversion. The fix, if it comes at all, will come from a combination of institutional redesign, deepening of democratic values, and most importantly, a refusal by citizens to accept the corruption of their mandate.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

Related:

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

Smoke & Mirrors, 130th Constitution Amendment Bill: Real issue is the trading of MLAs

Liberty, Evidence and Cooperation: A legal analysis of Jugraj v. State of Punjab

The post Defectors & Democracy: A critique of the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution appeared first on SabrangIndia.

More than two months have passed since the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 came into force. The Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha on March 13, passed on March 24, affirmed by the Rajya Sabha the following day, and received the President’s assent on March 30. Among its many far-reaching consequences and years of un-doing of a movement, the amendment left unresolved the question of what would happen to transgender persons already midway through hormone replacement therapy when the law came into force. Since then, petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the law have been filed in the High Courts of Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and now the Supreme Court itself. Trans persons and their allies are fighting back.

On May 4, a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued notice on a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act, directing that the matter be placed before a three-judge bench to be constituted by the Chief Justice. Notice was made returnable in six weeks to the Union government, all states, and Union Territories through their Advocate Generals and Standing Counsels.

A report in the New Indian Express stated that on May 27, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta urged the Supreme Court to consolidate and transfer all pending challenges from the various High Courts to the apex court. The Chief Justice, however, appeared reluctant.

“Sometimes we can have the advantage of a high court view as well,” the CJI remarked. When the law officer pressed the point, the CJI said he “will see.”

What the 2026 Amendment Changes and Why It Is Contested

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 was Parliament’s legislative response to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014) in which the Court explicitly rejected the biological test (the principle that chromosomes or genitalia should determine legal sex) in favour of a psychological test. The Court ruled:

“Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution states that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, which includes one’s right to expression of his self-identified gender.”

“Article 21, as already indicated, protects one’s right of self- determination of the gender to which a person belongs. Determination of gender to which a person belongs is to be decided by the person concerned. In other words, gender identity is integral to the dignity of an individual and is at the core of “personal autonomy” and “self-determination””

In its operative directions, the Court declared that “any insistence for SRS for declaring one’s gender is immoral and illegal.”

The 2019 Act, with its own imperfections, encoded foundational principles that gender identity is self-perceived and that Trans persons have an enforceable right to a certificate of identity based on self-declaration alone.

The 2026 amendment retreats from each of these principles.

The amendment deletes Section 4 (2) of the 2019 Act, which stated that a person recognised as transgender under sub-section (1) shall have a right to self-perceived gender identity. The Statement of Objects and Reasons justifies this deletion by claiming the Act was never intended to protect persons with various gender identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities or gender fluidities, and that legislative policy was always aimed only at those facing exclusion due to biological reasons.

Under the 2019 Act, Trans persons could also apply directly to the District Magistrate for a certificate of identity and medical evaluation was not a prerequisite. The 2026 amendment replaces this with a mandatory two-stage medical filter. First, the applicant must obtain a positive recommendation from a state-appointed medical board, headed by a Chief Medical Officer or Deputy Chief Medical Officer. Then, the DM may seek further evaluation from ‘other medical experts’ at their discretion. Neither stage specifies what criteria the board is assessing, and no appellate mechanism is prescribed. Since the certificate is the gateway to welfare schemes, healthcare, insurance, educational and employment reservations, and government-funded gender-affirming surgeries, those without it are excluded from all these entitlements.

The new Section 7 (1A) also requires every medical institution where gender-affirming surgery is performed to furnish details of that patient to the concerned District Magistrate and the medical board. However, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the Supreme Court had held that any intrusion into informational privacy must be sanctioned by law, pursue a legitimate state aim, and satisfy proportionality. The burden of demonstrating all three rests on the State.

A few of the key changes have been summarised in the table below for the ease of comparison:

The 2026 amendment also adds four new offences. Abducting and causing grievous hurt to force someone into a trans identity carries ten years to life imprisonment for adults, and life imprisonment where the victim is a child; compelling someone to present as Trans and subjecting them to begging or servitude carries five to ten years for adults and ten to fourteen years where the victim is a child. By contrast, sexual abuse, physical violence, and economic exploitation committed against trans persons remain punishable by a maximum of six months to two years.

In March this year, SabrangIndia had reported that:

“…the language of these provisions is vague and potentially overbroad, as such clauses may inadvertently criminalise support systems that have historically sustained transgender communities, including families, chosen kinship networks, and civil society organisations. There is concern that by framing transgender identity in the context of inducement or coercion, the law risks reinforcing the idea that such identities are not self-originating but externally imposed.”

The full report can be accessed here.

Petitions Filed in High Courts

Kerala High Court

On April 7, Advocate Padma Lakshmy filed two petitions in the Kerala High Court on behalf of Akhil K. Thampi (34) and Neethu (38), plausibly the first petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act. Senior Counsel Arundhati Katju, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that both were receiving hormone therapy, which the hospital had discontinued following the amendment act.

“Because the definition excludes me from the definition of transgender persons. There are people who are getting medical attention. But because of the change in the definition of transgender, the institutions which were earlier providing me medical treatment by way of hormonal therapy…Now the private medical institution is declining to provide it to him. It is like a sudden shock to the system.” counsel submitted.

The petitioners had sought a declaration that Section 2 (k) and related provisions are unconstitutional as violative of Articles 13(2), 14, 15, 19, and 21, and that the right to self-identification of gender is a fundamental right under Articles 14, 19, and 21.

Justice Bechu asked the Additional Solicitor General whether a person already undergoing hormone replacement therapy could be affected by the change in definition, and suggested that rather than staying the provision, the Court could grant relief individually to the petitioners.

“There cannot be a stay of statute. There is a presumption of constitutionality of a statute,” he observed orally.

On April 10, the Court permitted the two petitioners to continue hormone replacement therapy, subject to the condition that they had already commenced treatment.

“Having regard to the entirety of the circumstances, this Court is of the view that an abrupt stoppage of the hormone replacement therapy already started by the petitioner, would lead to adverse and absurd results. Such an object cannot prima facie be deciphered from the statutory provisions, as amended,” the order read.

The orders passed by the Kerala High Court may be read here:

Delhi High Court

On April 8, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia issued notice to the Central Government on a PIL filed by Advocate Dr. Chandresh Jain (W.P. (C) 4587/2026). The petition contended that the amendment undermines fundamental rights and dilutes the legal recognition of gender identity as a matter of personal autonomy, and challenged the State-controlled verification and certification mechanisms introduced by the amendment.

The matter has been listed for further hearing on July 22.

Rajasthan High Court

On April 21, a Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma and Justice Shubha Mehta issued notice in a PIL filed by the non-profit organisation Nai Bhor Sanstha, which claims to be Rajasthan’s first LGBTQ community-based organisation, working on trans and LGBTQ rights for over two decades.

The matter was listed after four weeks; court records however do not appear to reflect subsequent hearings.

Karnataka High Court

On May 7, Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum of the Karnataka High Court passed an interim order in two separate writ petitions (WP 11652/2026 and WP 11655/2026) filed by two trans persons, one undergoing hormone replacement therapy for several years, another also in the process of changing her name and gender in official documents.

The Court found that the medical records produced prima facie indicated both petitioners had been undergoing hormone replacement therapy since November 11, 2023, and that abrupt discontinuation could have adverse and detrimental consequences on their physical and mental well-being.

It directed that the petitioners be permitted to continue hormone replacement therapy as per the existing medical protocol and that concerned doctors and medical authorities facilitate continuation of such treatment without interruption. It also said that the continuation of treatment be subject to the outcome of the writ petitions and any orders passed by the Supreme Court, including in any transfer proceedings.

The matter was listed for further consideration after the summer vacation which were to take place from Monday, May 4, 2026, to Saturday, May 30, 2026.

The Central Question

At its core, the controversy over the 2026 amendment is a question about the relationship between the individual and the State: can identity be subjected to verification, or must it be recognised as an inherent aspect of personhood?

In NALSA, the Supreme Court placed identity firmly within the domain of personal autonomy. The 2026 amendment moves in the direction toward verification, classification, and administrative control. How the Courts ultimately resolve that tension will determine not only the fate of this legislation, but the constitutional foundations on which the rights of trans persons in India rest. 

Update: HC Proceedings Stayed

On June 15, a bench comprising of CJI Surya Kant and Justice V Mohana stayed proceedings before the four high courts and issued notice on the Union government’s plea seeking transfer of all such cases to the apex court to avoid conflicting rulings on the legislation.

Dr. Chandresh Jain, petitioner in the Delhi High Court, opposed the transfer request and informed the court that as a qualified doctor, his challenge was among the most comprehensive and involved substantial medical and scientific issues. He suggested that if consolidation was required, the matters could be heard together by a High Court, so that the Apex Court would have the benefit of a considered judgment before examining the issues- invoking, in effect, the Court’s own wisdom that High Court rulings often enrich constitutional adjudication at the apex level before it is finally undertaken.

Meanwhile, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also requested that the matter be placed before a three-judge bench. Is this a step toward hoping that NALSA is overruled altogether? The concern is not without basis as Mehta himself appeared to acknowledge the structural problem when he pointed out that High Courts may find it difficult to take a view contrary to the precedent set in NALSA.

Opposing the submission, Dr. Jain contended that his challenge was not founded on NALSA at all, and in fact questioned provisions introduced through the amendment itself. He argued that the new law was not only unconstitutional but also lacked any credible medical basis.

The High Courts were doing their part by issuing interim protections and beginning to develop a record. With those proceedings now stayed, that work is suspended. The centre of gravity has shifted back to the Supreme Court, and with it, the anxiety about what the apex court will do with a precedent the government appears uncomfortable leaving undisturbed.

It is difficult not to feel that the clock has, in some measure, been turned back. The institutional uncertainty and the dependence of an entire community on the disposition of a single court bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the period before 2014.

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

Related Articles:

A Law of Identity, Passed Without Listening: Inside the Transgender Amendment Bill, 2026 and the crisis it has triggered | SabrangIndia

Withdraw the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 NOW! | SabrangIndia

9 years since the passing of the NALSA judgment, has the cycle of discrimination and ostracism finally been broken for the transgender community? | SabrangIndia

The post A regressive 2026 amendment to rights of Trans persons is under legal challenge even as pride month is celebrated appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself. Where was all of that sitting before you opened up your email? Your emails were not hiding inside your laptop. They were not floating in air. They were sitting on a computer, not yours, but someone else’s; in a building, you have never seen, possibly thousands of kilometres away. A building, filled with row upon rows of powerful computers humming away around the clock, these are data centres.

Think of it this way. When you post a photo on Instagram, it does not just stay on your phone. It is copied to a data centre so that your friend in Delhi or your cousin in Dubai can see it on their phone too. When you stream a film on Netflix on a Friday night, that film is not beamed from a studio in Hollywood directly to your television. It is stored in a data centre and delivered to you through the internet. When you ask Google a question , “best biryani near me”, Google’s computers in a data centre somewhere race to find the answer and send it back to your screen in less than a second. Every time you send a WhatsApp message, make a UPI payment, book a cab on Uber, or even ask ChatGPT to help you draft an email, a data centre somewhere in the world is doing the heavy lifting.

Now, while billionaires (apologies, trillionaires) like Elon Musk are busy trying to beam the internet down from satellites, the vast majority of the world’s internet still travels through undersea cables made of optical fibre, thin glass threads that carry pulses of light across ocean floors from continent to continent. These cables connect to data centres on land. And it is inside those data centres that the internet, in a very physical sense, actually lives.

A data centre is, at its simplest, a very large, very expensive warehouse full of computers. But unlike the laptop on your desk, these computers never shut down. They run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. And because they are working so hard, they produce an enormous amount of heat, like thousands of kitchen ovens running simultaneously in a sealed room. If that heat is not removed, the computers melt. Literally. So data centres need massive cooling systems: giant fans, industrial air conditioners, and increasingly, systems that circulate chilled water or specialised liquids directly over the machines. All of this, the computing and the cooling, requires a staggering amount of electricity. A single large data centre can consume as much power as a small city. Some of the newer ones, built for artificial intelligence, need as much electricity as eighty thousand to eight hundred thousand homes.

And that is before we talk about water. Many cooling systems work by evaporating water, the same principle that makes you feel cool when you step out of a swimming pool on a windy day. A large data centre can gulp down up to five million gallons of water in a single day , roughly the amount an entire town of fifty thousand people would use.

The Boom

For decades, data centres existed without the current levels of scrutiny. They were modest buildings tucked away in industrial parks, and nobody paid much attention to them. But in the last three or four years, something changed dramatically. The explosion of artificial intelligence, tools like ChatGPT, image generators, self-driving car software, sent demand for computing power through the roof. Training a single AI model can require thousands of specialised chips running for months, consuming electricity equivalent to what several thousand homes use in a year. And once trained, these AI systems need even more data centres to actually serve millions of users asking questions, generating images, and running code every second of the day.

The result has been a construction frenzy unlike anything the technology industry has ever seen. In 2025, the fourteen largest data centre companies spent close to seven hundred and fifty billion dollars building new facilities. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta alone spent over four hundred billion dollars, nearly double, what they spent the year before. For the first time in American history, spending on data centre construction surpassed spending on office buildings. By the end of 2025, more than twenty-three gigawatts of data centre capacity was under construction worldwide across over eight hundred sites. The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity consumption by data centres will roughly double by 2030, reaching levels comparable to the entire electricity consumption of Japan.

The counter-current in America

Naturally, a movement of this much capital will have repercussions. Across the United States, ordinary citizens, farmers, retirees, schoolteachers, small-town mayors, have started fighting back against this expansion with remarkable success.

The reason is simple. A data centre may power the global internet, but the costs are borne locally. When a giant facility moves into a rural county, it strains the local power grid. Electricity bills go up for everyone. Noise from the industrial cooling fans is relentless, a constant low hum that residents describe as maddening. Millions of litres of water is diverted from farms and homes. Fertile agricultural land gets paved over. In addition, the number of permanent jobs these highly automated facilities create? Often just a few hundred.

A 2026 Gallup poll found that seventy per cent of Americans now oppose having a data centre built near their neighbourhood. This is not a left-versus-right issue. Both Republicans worried about corporate tax breaks and Democrats concerned about the environment have found common ground. Over a hundred and forty activist groups across two dozen states have organised against data centre projects. In the last two years alone, roughly sixty-four billion dollars’ worth of projects have been either blocked outright or significantly delayed.

The stories are vivid. In Cascade Locks, Oregon, residents were so angry about a proposed hundred-million-dollar data centre that they organised a recall election, voted out the officials who had approved it, and the new board promptly cancelled the project. In Warrenton, Virginia, over five hundred residents packed a town council meeting, a hundred and thirty of them stood up to speak against an Amazon data centre, and in the next election, every single council member who had supported the project lost their seat. In a small town in Missouri called Peculiar, a grassroots group calling itself “Don’t Dump Data in Peculiar” fought a billion-and-a-half-dollar project so effectively that the town’s planning commission rewrote the zoning code to ban data centres entirely.

The Search for New Ground

Faced with this wall of resistance, the tech giants have started looking elsewhere. If Americans do not want these facilities in their backyards, the companies will build them in countries where governments are more welcoming, land is cheaper, and opposition is less organised.

India has become a prime destination. The Indian government has rolled out an extraordinary welcome mat: it granted data centres formal “infrastructure status” to make financing easier, offered cheap land, reduced electricity tariffs, and in its February 2026 budget, announced a twenty-year tax holiday for foreign companies building data centres. Under this framework, income of such foreign cloud service providers from global cloud operations routed through India-based data centres will not be subject to Indian taxation, subject to specified conditions. Additionally, services to Indian customers must be delivered through an Indian reseller entity, ensuring that domestic transactions remain within the tax net.

India also has what the industry needs i.e., a massive domestic market of over nine hundred and forty million internet users, the world’s highest per-capita mobile data consumption, and a financial system(think of the tens of billions in UPI transactions processed every single month)  that desperately needs local computing infrastructure to keep running securely.

The Gulf States, particularly the UAE, have made a similar pitch, offering land, cheap energy, and streamlined approvals.

Why your Data Forces these Centres onto Indian Soil

There is another, less visible reason why data centres are being built inside India at this pace, and it has nothing to do with cheap land or tax breaks. It has to do with the law, specifically, laws that govern where your personal data is allowed to physically exist.

Think about what happens when you make a payment using Google Pay or PhonePe. Your transaction details   your bank account number, the amount, the merchant, the time, are all pieces of personal data. Now, the question is, where is that data stored? Is it sitting on a server in Virginia? In Singapore? Or in India? The answer matters, because governments want to make sure they can access, audit, and protect the financial data of their citizens. If your transaction records are stored on a server in a foreign country, an Indian regulator cannot simply walk in and inspect them.

This is the logic behind data localisation, the idea that certain categories of data must be stored on servers physically located within the country’s borders. And India has been tightening these rules steadily.

The most sweeping example is the Reserve Bank of India’s 2018 directive. The RBI issued an unambiguous order that said all entities operating in India’s payment ecosystem, banks, payment gateways, wallets, third-party processors, must store the complete data of every domestic transaction exclusively on systems located within India. This covers everything like transaction details, customer data, payment credentials like OTPs and PINs, and settlement instructions. This single directive forced global payment giants like Visa and MasterCard to scramble for server space inside the country. Specialised cloud providers reported that up to seventy per cent of their communication volume now runs through strictly Indian data centres to comply with the RBI’s rules.

The securities regulator, SEBI, followed suit. In August 2024, through its Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework, SEBI mandated that all data relating to Indian securities markets, trade records, client KYC documents, fund flows, margin records, must be hosted exclusively within India. The order was so sweeping that the industry pushed back hard over the costs of migrating data from offshore servers. SEBI placed the strictest parts of the mandate in temporary abeyance in December 2024, but the rule has not been repealed. Companies are actively preparing for the day it is enforced, building flexible systems that can rapidly move workloads back to Indian soil.

Overarching all of this is India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023. Earlier drafts of this law proposed a strict blanket rule that all Indian user data must stay in India. The final version adopted a more flexible approach. Under Section 16 of the Act, cross-border data transfers are permitted by default, but the central government retains the power to blacklist specific countries at any time, instantly cutting off data flows to those jurisdictions. This creates a powerful incentive for global technology companies. Even though the law does not currently require blanket localisation, the threat of future restrictions hangs permanently in the air. Any company that has invested billions in serving Indian users knows that the government could, with a single notification, force them to store all Indian data domestically. Building data centres inside India is, in effect, an insurance policy against that risk.

The combined effect of these regulations, the RBI’s hard mandate for payments data, SEBI’s framework for securities data, and the DPDP Act’s latent power to restrict cross-border flows, has created an enormous, legally driven demand for data centre capacity within India’s borders. It is not just that companies want to be in India for its market. In many cases, it is also because they are legally required to be here. The scale of the data centre could however be a choice of the company. Essentially, the discussion over the data centres would then become whether we need massive data centres like the proposed Google AI Data centre in Visakhapatnam.

The Data Centre in Vizag

In October 2025, Google announced plans to build a massive data centre campus in Vizag, a one-gigawatt facility, among the largest anywhere in the world outside of Untied States, backed by an estimated ten to fifteen billion dollars in investment. The project, developed in partnership with AdaniConneX and Airtel’s Nxtra, would include three subsea cable landings connecting Vizag directly to global internet networks stretching to Singapore, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States. The Andhra Pradesh government allotted roughly 600 acres of land across three locations: Tarluvada, Adavivaram, and Rambilli. Construction officially broke ground on April 28, 2026. State leaders hailed the project as transformative, a chance to position Vizag as a major global technology hub.

But on the ground, the story looks very different.

About two hundred acres at Tarluvada belong to Dalit families. These are parcels of land that were allotted to landless families in the 1970s under land reform programmes,  small plots, about two acres each, meant to give the poorest communities a foothold of economic security. Under the Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act of 1977, these lands cannot legally be sold, gifted, leased, or transferred to anyone. They were meant to stay with marginalised families forever. Farmers allege that parcels held by dominant castes are being left untouched, while Dalit-owned land is specifically targeted.

The promises of prosperity have come under sharp scrutiny. The skills required to run a hyper scale data centre, thermal engineering, cybersecurity, network architecture, are worlds apart from the agricultural livelihoods of the communities being displaced.

The Water Question

But the concern that cuts deepest in Vizag is water.

To understand why, we need to step back and look at the larger picture. In 2018, NITI Aayog, the Indian government’s own policy think tank, published a report that should have shaken the country. It warned that twenty-one major Indian cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad, were on track to run out of groundwater by 2030. Six hundred million Indians, the report said, already face “high to extreme” water stress. India holds eighteen per cent of the world’s population but has access to just four per cent of its freshwater. Per capita water availability has fallen to around eleven hundred cubic metres, below the international water stress threshold of seventeen hundred, and dangerously close to the scarcity line of a thousand.

Visakhapatnam is not exempt from this crisis. It is already a water-stressed city. Groundwater monitoring data shows that any parts of the district have seen 20 metres drop in ground water levels from 2025-26. Scanty rainfall, rapid urbanisation, and industrial expansion have drained the city’s aquifers faster than they can recharge. Women queuing at public taps and water tankers is a recurring sight every summer.

It is into this reality that a one-gigawatt data centre is being built. Data centres are extraordinarily thirsty. Google itself disclosed that its data centres worldwide-consumed roughly thirty-one billion litres of water in 2024 alone. Industry analysts estimate that eighty to ninety per cent of the water used by data centres comes from potable sources, lakes, rivers, and aquifers, often the same sources that supply drinking water to local communities. This is not theoretical harm. In Joliet, Illinois, an aquifer that historically supplied the city’s drinking water has been so depleted, partly due to data centre construction in the surrounding Chicago region, that expert’s project it will be entirely gone by 2030. Loudoun County in Virginia, home to the world’s densest cluster of data centres, supplied over a billion gallons of potable water to those facilities in a single year.

Has a direct, proven causal link between a data centre and groundwater collapse been formally established in India? Not yet. The Vizag facility has only just broken ground. But the physics are not in doubt. A June 2026 report by the United Nations University warned that by 2030, the water footprint of global data centres would equal the basic annual domestic water needs of all 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa. The question is not whether data centres consume enormous quantities of water. The question is what happens when you plant one of the largest such facilities on earth in a city that is already struggling to give its residents enough water to drink.

The Human Rights Forum has pointed out that part of the Vizag project sits barely a hundred and twenty metres from the Mudasarlova reservoir, one of the city’s crucial drinking water sources. Environmental groups allege that hill-cutting, forest clearance, and construction activity near the reservoir’s catchment area have already begun altering the natural water flows that feed it,  and that all of this proceeded before environmental clearances were properly completed. On June 10, 2026, the state environment authority granted clearance to the Adavivaram site, but the HRF condemned the decision as a “brazen injustice,” noting that the clearance document was conspicuously silent on the project’s implications for drainage patterns, groundwater recharge, and the long-term water security of the city.

Conclusion

The uprooting of communities in Vizag, the silence on water, the rushed clearances, these are not failures of one project but symptoms of a model in which technology investment arrives in India as a kind of coronation, where the politician who secures the deal is anointed a visionary and the sheer scale of the numbers announced creates a gravity so strong that democratic friction , the town hall, the impact assessment, the voice of the farmer whose land is being taken, gets crushed before it can form.

Perhaps the most troubling part is not that India is building data centres, it must, given its data localisation mandates and nine hundred and forty million internet users, but that it appears to be building them without demanding what other nations have already begun to insist upon.

Singapore imposed a three-year moratorium on new data centres, lifted it only under the strictest green energy and efficiency standards in the Asia-Pacific, and now approves capacity solely on sustainability merit. Stockholm integrated its data centres into the city’s heating grid, turning waste heat into warmth for thirty thousand apartments; Microsoft has moved to zero-water cooling designs; waterless chip-level cooling systems that halve energy consumption are commercially deployed today. None of this is speculative. The technologies and the governance frameworks exist.

What does not yet exist in India is the institutional feedback loop that would allow a resident of Tarluvada or a woman queuing at a water tanker in Vizag to say, credibly and consequentially that “we are not against progress, but we need to know where our water will come from, whether our land can lawfully be taken, and what, specifically, we stand to gain” and to have that question shape the project rather than be swept aside by it.

Until that loop is built, India risks winning the data centre and losing the aquifer, gaining the investment headline and hollowing out the communities it was supposed to serve, and discovering, perhaps too late, that for a country of one and a half billion people living on four per cent of the world’s freshwater, the cost of unaccountable development is not abstract but existential.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

Related:

Himalayan Courts: Young folds & new cracks in environmental jurisprudence

Environmental Jurisprudence: The Bombay High Court’s shifting language

Cracks in Indian Environment Jurisprudence: An examination of High Courts of central India

The post The what’s & why’s of Data Centres and how are they hijacking the India Story appeared first on SabrangIndia.

To understand the operational logic of contemporary majoritarian governance, we must look beyond the reassuring rhetoric of constitutional democracy and examine the citizen’s physical body. At its core, citizenship is the violent imprint of the nation-state on the human form. Those whose bodies fall outside this sovereign mark are not merely seen as uncivilised or unmapped; they are structurally marked as targets for systemic elimination. As Giorgio Agamben famously observed, the sovereign sphere includes life primarily through its exclusion, defining a body by its capacity to be killed. Consequently, entry into the polis is never unconditional; it is permanently anchored in the structural possibility of expulsion.

This reality thoroughly dismantles the modern fiction that human rights are inalienable from birth. Proclaiming the existence of natural rights obscures a deeper, more troubling mechanism: the law inscribes itself onto your biological form the moment you enter the world, instantly circumscribing existence within parameters policed by a sovereign who arbitrates what constitutes a protectable and worthy life.

This structural stratification has deep historical and cultural roots. In the ancient Greek polis, women and slaves were entirely excluded from political life and relegated to the realm of bare animal existence (zoe). Similarly, the traditional Indian caste system organised society by dividing populations into those with surplus social capital and those without, marginalising Avarna and Dalit communities and reducing them to beasts of burden through a traditional, ritualistic biopolitics.

While modern democracy apparently extends political rights to all, the underlying exceptions persist. Hannah Arendt exposed this systemic vulnerability by questioning the existence of a foundational “right to have rights.” Without this primary, irrevocable guarantee, any specific civil right can be suspended or revoked by the state at will. A body stripped of this structural protection moves from a state of qualified political life (bios) to a phase of bare life, where its franchise is stripped by opaque administrative measures, and ultimately into the “death worlds” of permanent, unlivable conditions. Such a body becomes depoliticised, de-nationalised, and destined for institutional annihilation (like Umar Khalid and other UAPA victims).

This violent gap between abstract legal definitions and brutal lived experience is vibrantly illustrated by the targeted treatment of the politically or physically vulnerable. The tragic incarceration and structural neglect of the late activist Father Stan Swamy demonstrate how state security pretexts are weaponised to deny basic human dignity and judicial empathy, completely severing formal citizenship from actual human existence.

In the contemporary landscape, dissenting intellectuals (labelled “urban Naxals”) and Indian Muslims are subjected to a terrifying mutation of this power, rendered necropolitical citizens. Through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics, the sovereign power to dictate who may live and who must die, the state constructs “death worlds” for politically inconvenient populations.

In life, these populations are pushed to the fringes, harassed by selective administrative tools such as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and the UCC, and threatened with legal exile. Yet a supreme irony occurs at the moment of biological collapse: the state recognises their citizenship primarily in death or through the execution of state violence on their lives. The living body is treated as an existential threat that must be subdued, whereas the deceased body is perfectly safe; it can be seamlessly reintegrated into the legal record through meticulous posthumous processing, inquests, and closed case files. Thus, they become citizen by death; a sort of necropolitical citizenship is emerging.

To maintain this absolute control, the state capitalises on the latent vulnerability embedded in every civic body. By levying sweeping charges of treason, waging war against social justice movements, and branding critics or writers as national security threats for merely possessing radical literature, the sovereign instils a pervasive state of fear. The law ceases to function as an objective arbiter and instead becomes a tool of majoritarian discipline. By systematically assigning disparate values to majoritarian and minority lives, the legal system enforces an ethnic democracy, a political ecosystem in which the state manages populations not to protect them, but to legally manage their elimination.

The Judicial Rubber-Stamp: EVM Opacity and the Legalisation of the SIR hunting

This biopolitical shift from public sovereignty to bureaucratic control is not achieved merely through overt violence; it is systematically entrenched through the legal architecture of the democratic state, where judicial mechanisms increasingly insulate the apparatus of power from public oversight. The erosion of the citizen’s democratic agency is dual-pronged: it targets how votes are counted and, more fundamentally, who is allowed to remain on the voting rolls in the first place.

The first mechanism was legitimised by the Supreme Court’s judgment on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) verification. In that case, the Court rejected petitions led by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking 100% physical verification of VVPAT slips. By prioritising automated efficiency over absolute transparency, the Court detached the biological voter from independent validation of their franchise. Public intellectuals such as Yogendra Yadav noted that reducing voting to a state-managed computational loop isolates the citizen. The Court ruled that popular suspicion of proprietary source code is insufficient grounds to disrupt bureaucratic machinery, affirming that the citizen’s expressive political act (bios) is subordinate to executive design.

However, this electronic opacity forms only the defensive perimeter of the state. The offensive biopolitical manoeuvre is found in the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment upholding the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

Delivered by a Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, the judgment unanimously upheld the ECI’s authority to deploy the SIR under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and Article 324 of the Constitution. The petitioners argued that the SIR was a surreptitious, backdoor move to conduct citizenship screening and mass profiling under the guise of purifying electoral rolls. Under the cover of this non-transparent process, a partisan ECI has conducted sweeping purges of voter registries, deleting more than 10% of voters across multiple states and disproportionately targeting minority populations, particularly Indian Muslims.

The profound danger of the SIR judgment lies in its striking internal contradiction, which exposes the thanatopolitical character of the contemporary state. On the one hand, the Supreme Court attempted to provide an alibi for its decision by declaring that deletion from an electoral roll “does not amount to a declaration that the individual is not a citizen of India.” It framed the deletion merely as the “Commission’s inability to be satisfied” for electoral purposes.

Yet, in the very same breath, the Court directed the ECI to forward all such deleted names to the competent authorities under the Citizenship Act within four weeks, setting a strict deadline for the “adjudication of their citizenship” before the upcoming elections.

This directive turns the foundational presumption of regular citizenship on its head. By sending millions of arbitrarily deleted individuals to executive tribunals under the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Court has institutionalised a mechanism that shifts the entire burden of proof onto marginalised individuals. The biological body is stripped of its political skin (the franchise) by an opaque administrative swipe, and is then forced to prove its right to exist before the lethal apparatus of state citizenship laws.

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan delivered a strong critique of the verdict, calling the development “very unfortunate for democracy” and explicitly accusing the Election Commission of “working as an agent of the BJP.” Bhushan’s intervention cuts to the core of the institutional collapse: when the apex court validates an opaque, executive-led hunt that strips millions of their political status without prior due process, long after elections have already been altered by these very deletions, the judiciary ceases to be a shield against tyranny. Instead, it becomes the ultimate legitimising organ of fascist majoritarianism.

When the EVM-VVPAT judgment and the SIR verdict are integrated, the full anatomy of Hindutva’s biopolitical state is laid bare. The SIR hunt determines which bodies are excluded from the polis altogether, reducing them to Homo Sacer, bare lives marked for legal and political exile. Meanwhile, the unverifiable EVM matrix ensures that the bodies permitted to remain within the polis are reduced to compliant components of a state-controlled ritual.

Through this dual design, the transition from democracy to an ethnic fascism is completed, not by violating the law, but by rewriting it to ensure that the preservation of majoritarian purity becomes the highest constitutional mandate.

Read the first part of the article here 

Courtesy: The AIDEM

The post The Biopolitical Anatomy of Hindutva Fascism: Part II: SIR, EVMs and the Judiciary appeared first on SabrangIndia.

NTA STATEMENT REGARDING THE ACTION ON TELEGRAM PLATFORM IN INDIA

1. The National Testing Agency (NTA) welcomes the directions issued today in respect of the Telegram platform in India. The directions, issued on recommendations of NTA are calibrated and bounded in time:

(a) a…

— National Testing Agency (@NTA_Exams) June 16, 2026

The government has justified these measures as a response to organised examination fraud, alleged paper-leak scams and misinformation campaigns. According to statements carried by Mint, WION and other media outlets, authorities identified several Telegram channels allegedly offering access to examination papers in exchange for money. The NTA further claimed that Telegram’s message-editing feature had been exploited to create fabricated evidence of paper leaks by allowing administrators to insert examination papers into older messages while retaining original timestamps.

The importance of maintaining the integrity of national examinations cannot be disputed. The future of lakhs of students depends upon a fair and credible examination process, and organised cheating networks undoubtedly deserve stringent action. However, the constitutional question raised by the Telegram ban is not whether examination fraud should be prevented. The question is whether the State can suspend access to an entire communication platform used by millions because some actors are allegedly misusing it. Once that question is asked, the government’s decision begins to appear far less straightforward than official statements suggest.

The real problem is not Telegram

The government’s explanation begins from a fundamentally flawed premise. The recurring problem in India’s examination system is not Telegram, WhatsApp or any other communication platform. Paper leaks do not originate on social media. They originate within the examination apparatus itself. Every leak necessarily begins somewhere in the chain of printing, storage, transportation, administration or distribution of examination materials. By the time a question paper appears on a messaging platform, the breach has already occurred.

Detailed report on paper leaks may be read here.

This distinction is critical because it reveals the extent to which the government’s response is directed at symptoms rather than causes. Telegram may be one of the channels through which leaked material is circulated, but it is not the source of the leak. The source lies within the institutions responsible for safeguarding examination integrity. A serious response to examination fraud would therefore focus on identifying vulnerabilities within the examination system itself: who had access to the papers, how the chain of custody was compromised, where security protocols failed and what reforms are required to prevent future breaches.

Instead, the government’s intervention directs public attention towards the platform through which information allegedly travels. This approach risks obscuring the more uncomfortable reality that examination fraud is ultimately a governance failure. Blocking Telegram may create the appearance of decisive action, but it does little to address the institutional weaknesses that make such fraud possible in the first place.

The NTA’s own explanation undermines the ban

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the government’s justification is that it appears to undermine the necessity of the measure it seeks to defend. The NTA’s own statement acknowledges that the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), state police forces and specialised cybercrime units had already identified and removed numerous Telegram channels, groups and bots allegedly involved in examination fraud. Law enforcement agencies had reportedly conducted investigations, tracked financial transactions and made arrests.

These admissions raise a difficult question for the government. If authorities were already capable of identifying specific channels and specific offenders, why was it necessary to block the entire platform? If targeted interventions were available and functioning, what justified the escalation to a nationwide platform-wide restriction affecting millions of lawful users?

The significance of these questions becomes even clearer when viewed through constitutional principles. Democracies do not permit governments to adopt the broadest possible restriction merely because it is administratively convenient. The burden lies on the State to demonstrate why less restrictive alternatives were inadequate. Yet the government’s own account suggests that channel-level takedowns, criminal investigations and targeted enforcement actions were already underway. The NTA therefore appears to have supplied the strongest argument against its own decision.

A constitutional problem of proportionality

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that restrictions on fundamental rights must satisfy the doctrine of proportionality. In Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the Court made clear that even where the State pursues a legitimate objective, it must demonstrate that the measure adopted is necessary, that less restrictive alternatives are unavailable and that the benefits of the restriction outweigh the harm caused.

Preventing examination fraud is undoubtedly a legitimate objective. The difficulty lies in establishing that a nationwide platform ban was necessary to achieve it. The government’s own statements reveal the existence of multiple alternatives. Channels could be removed. Fraud networks could be investigated. Individuals could be arrested. Financial transactions could be traced. Criminal prosecutions could be initiated.

Once these alternatives are acknowledged, the constitutional burden shifts to the State to explain why they were insufficient. The public explanation offered thus far does not convincingly do so. Instead, it suggests that a platform-wide restriction was adopted despite the existence of narrower measures. That is precisely the scenario the doctrine of proportionality seeks to prevent.

What Anuradha Bhasin case actually says about internet restrictions

The Telegram ban also cannot be separated from the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020). While that case arose in the context of internet restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir, the principles articulated by the Court have broader relevance for all forms of digital restrictions.

The Court recognised that access to the internet is closely intertwined with the exercise of freedom of speech, access to information, education, trade and professional activity. It held that restrictions affecting digital communications must satisfy standards of necessity and proportionality and cannot be imposed through opaque executive processes. Most importantly, the Court emphasised transparency. Orders restricting communications must be published. Citizens must know why their rights are being restricted. Affected parties must have an opportunity to challenge such restrictions before courts.

In the present instance, however, the public has largely been presented with press releases and official explanations rather than the actual legal order. The reasoning adopted by the authorities remains unavailable. Whether Telegram was given an opportunity to be heard remains unclear. Whether less restrictive alternatives were seriously considered is unknown. These omissions are not procedural technicalities; they go to the heart of the constitutional safeguards identified by the Supreme Court.

The Shreya Singhal problem

The legal basis of the government’s action raises another serious concern. The reported reliance on Section 69A of the Information Technology Act immediately invites scrutiny because the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that provision in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) only because it was presented as a narrow and carefully structured mechanism.

The Court accepted Section 69A because it involved targeted blocking of specific information under limited circumstances and subject to procedural safeguards. Its constitutional validity depended upon its narrow scope.

The Telegram ban raises the question of whether that narrow provision is now being transformed into a sweeping power capable of disabling entire communication platforms. As the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has argued, there is a significant difference between blocking particular content and shutting down an intermediary used by millions. If Section 69A is interpreted broadly enough to justify platform-wide restrictions, the reasoning that underpinned its constitutional validity begins to weaken considerably.

The message editing direction may be even more troubling

The direction requiring Telegram to disable its message-editing feature raises concerns that extend even beyond the platform ban itself. While the government has publicly explained why it believes the feature was being misused, it has not clearly identified the legal authority under which it can compel a platform to redesign a feature for an entire country’s user base.

This distinction matters because blocking information and redesigning technological architecture are fundamentally different exercises of power. One concerns content regulation; the other concerns direct intervention in the design of digital infrastructure.

The implications are far-reaching. If governments can order the removal of editing functions today, similar arguments could potentially be invoked tomorrow against encryption, anonymous communication or other platform features. The issue is therefore not confined to Telegram. It concerns the broader relationship between state power and digital architecture.

Another example of India’s growing shutdown culture

The Telegram ban is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a broader pattern in which communication restrictions increasingly become the preferred response to administrative challenges. Over the last decade, multiple states have suspended internet services during recruitment examinations, teacher eligibility tests and competitive entrance examinations. These shutdowns are almost always justified as temporary and necessary measures to prevent cheating.

Yet despite repeated restrictions, examination leaks continue to occur. Fraud networks continue to operate. Recruitment scandals continue to emerge.

What persists is not the effectiveness of these measures but their repetition. Instead of reforming institutions, authorities increasingly appear to restrict communications. The result is a governance model in which the burden of institutional failure is shifted onto citizens rather than addressed at its source.

The real danger is the normalisation of censorship

The most significant concern raised by the Telegram ban is not its duration but the principle it reflects. Every time the State confronts a difficult administrative problem, there appears to be a growing willingness to restrict communications as part of the solution. Each restriction is presented as temporary. Each is described as exceptional. Yet collectively they establish a troubling precedent.

Over time, extraordinary measures become ordinary ones. Communication restrictions become routine administrative tools. Fundamental rights become subject to considerations of convenience and expediency.

The future of lakhs of students deserves protection. But constitutional freedoms deserve protection as well. A secure examination system will ultimately be built through accountability, transparency, stronger institutions and effective criminal investigation—not through platform bans and communication restrictions. The Telegram ban therefore raises a question that extends well beyond NEET. It forces us to confront whether India is becoming increasingly comfortable with restricting communications whenever governance becomes difficult. If that trend continues, the consequences will be felt far beyond a single examination cycle.

Related:

When Morality Meets Surveillance: The court’s push toward state-regulated digital content

Repeal recent amendments to the RTI act, 2005: Justice A.P Shah in an Open Letter

Safe harbour or shadow censorship? The battle over India’s digital speech

State-sponsored attacks of surveillance reveal an erosion on Indians’ right to privacy, especially journalists, political opposition

The post Telegram before NEET: When governance fails, censorship takes its place appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Satyaki was testifying in a Pune Court and made this disclosure in his cross-examination before Special Judge Amol Shinde; who is presently dealing with the criminal defamation case he has filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for allegedly defaming his grand uncle in a speech in London.

Leader of the Opposition (LOP) Rahul Gandhi’s counsel Milind Pawar is presently cross-examining Satyaki in the trial. In his testimony, Satyaki on Monday stated that his granduncle was labelled as a ‘Veer’ in a periodical run by the Gadar Organisation even before he was sent to the Andaman.

“It is true to say that, Savarkar had filed a clemency petition ten times. It is true to say that, he was referred to as a ‘Veer’ when the clemency petition was filed. It is true to say that, Savarkar was referred to as ‘Veer’ even when he submitted clemency petitions ten times. It is not true to say that, it is a contradiction to call someone a ‘Veer’ who has filed a clemency petition ten times. It is true to say that, revolutionists from that same period— Rajguru, Batukeshwar Dutt, and Ashfaqulla Khan— did not file a clemency petition. It is true to say that, Savarkar filed a mercy petition within the first month after being sentenced. I was unaware that Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt had petitioned the British government, demanding to be treated as prisoners of war and refusing any concessions or acts of leniency. It is true to say that, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt remained steadfast in their ideology and principles until the very end. I am aware that revolutionist Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt did not compromise on their principles and ideologies in their dealings with the British right to the end,” Satyaki told the court.

Further, Satyaki also told the court that the records pertaining to the 10 mercy or clemency petitions filed by Savarkar are kept in the official government records. He added that the language in these mercy petitions filed by Savarkar did not indicate his ‘loyalty’ to the British regime.

“These clemency petitions used to be forwarded by the prison administration to the British government for approval. It is true to say that the British government had the authority to commute or alter the sentences in any mercy petitions that were submitted. It is true to say that, the authority to reduce or remit a sentence depended on the policy and procedure of the British government. It is true to say that, Savarkar’s clemency petitions are available in government records. It is true to say that, these petitions exist and that I have not filed them,” the testimony reads.

Satyaki has further stated that the British government rejected all of Savarkar’s clemency petitions and in their replies, expressed the apprehension that if Savarkar were released, he would once again participate in the revolutionary movement, leading to the end of British rule.

“It is true to say that, filing a clemency petition to seek a reduction in the sentence was a standard procedure under the British government. It is true to say that, not only Savarkar but other prisoners also filed clemency petitions. It is true to say that, filing a clemency petition was neither exceptional nor illegal. It is not true to say that the language Savarkar used in that clemency petition was one of humility. It is not true to say that the petitions contained words expressing loyalty to the British government. It is true to say that, in that petition, Savarkar requested a reduction of his sentence,” the complainant Satyaki said.

In his testimony, Satyaki further stated that the language Savarkar used in the clemency petitions was in keeping with official protocol. He also opined that the reason revolutionists took up arms was the injustice perpetrated by the British and that Savarkar had expressed the view that had the British implemented reforms earlier, the revolutionists would not have resorted to arms.

During the ongoing proceedings, the Pune court has recorded the excerpts from one of the mercy petitions filed by Savarkar, stating that others sent to the Andaman jail along with him were released but he was not and instead was classified as a Class D prisoner and was subjected to harsh punishments.

“I am not aware that Savarkar signed every petition with the text: ‘I beg to remain, Sir, your most obedient servant, V.D. Savarkar.’ It is not true to say that the process of Savarkar’s release began after these ten petitions were filed. I do not have a report available that makes a comparative study of the mercy petitions filed by Savarkar and those filed by other prisoners, as well as their contents. It is true to say that, filing a mercy petition is an official procedure intended to seek a reduction in the sentence, and Savarkar availed himself of this very process. There is no expert report available to demonstrate that the content and language of Savarkar’s mercy petition were merely formal or part of his strategy,” Satyaki further added to his testimony LiveLaw stated.

Further, Satyaki stated, “It is true to say that, no prisoner was under any obligation to submit a mercy petition. It is true to say that, whether or not to file a mercy petition depended on the preference of the concerned prisoner. It is true to say that, these revolutionists endured great hardships; however, I do not know the names of the specific prisoners among them who filed mercy petitions.”

Satyaki’s cross-examination will continue on July 1.

Background:

The defamation complaint asserts that Gandhi has repeatedly defamed Savarkar on various occasions over the years. One specific incident highlighted was on March 5, 2023, when Gandhi addressed the Overseas Congress in the United Kingdom. The complainant, who testified yesterday, Satyaki Savarkar, has claimed that Gandhi intentionally made wild allegations against Savarkar, knowing them to be untrue, with the intention of harming Savarkar’s reputation and causing mental agony to the complainant and his family. He states that the defamatory speech was delivered in England, but its impact was felt in Pune as it was published and circulated throughout India.

Satyaki, in his complaint, has submitted several news reports and a YouTube link to a video of Gandhi’s speech in London as evidence. He has claimed that Gandhi falsely accused Savarkar of writing a book in which he described beating up a Muslim person, which Savarkar never wrote and such an incident never happened.

Satyaki argued that Gandhi made these false, malicious, and wild allegations with the specific objective of defaming Savarkar and harming his reputation. The criminal defamation application filed by Satyaki demands maximum punishment for Gandhi under Section 500 (Punishment for defamation) of the IPC and seeks imposition of maximum compensation as per Section 357 (Order to pay compensation) of the CrPC.

SabrangIndia has carried multiple analyses and reports of Savarkar and how his attitudes could be dubbed as casteist. These may be read here and here.

Related:

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva: Book Review

Savarkar’s grandson calls for trade boycott of Muslims: HJS, GOA

Teaser of Film on Savarkar: Lies Galore

The post Yes, Savarkar did file 10 Mercy Petitions before the British, revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh refused to Compromise: Grandnephew tells Pune Court appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The judgment, delivered on June 12, 2026 by First Additional Sessions Judge Tabassum Khan, found Deepak alias Baba Kevat, Ajay alias Ajju Rathore, Prakash Kaushal, Pawan Batham, Amar alias Bhola Batham, Kanhaiya Batham and Ballu alias Anuj Raghuvanshi guilty of offences under Sections 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 307 read with 149 (attempt to murder with common object) and 302 read with 149 (murder with common object) of the Indian Penal Code.

At the sentencing stage, the Court made a particularly noteworthy observation, recording that the prosecution had successfully established that the accused had committed mob lynching. The Court identified several aggravating circumstances, including the formation of an unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapons, the extreme brutality inflicted upon the victims, the fatal injuries suffered by Najir Ahmed, and the injuries caused to the surviving victims.

Background: Attack on cattle transporters

According to the prosecution case, on the intervening night of August 2 and 3, 2022, truck driver Sheikh Lala was transporting cattle along with Najir Ahmed and Sheikh Mustaq from Nandarwada towards Maharashtra. Around 12:30 a.m., when their vehicle reached near Barakhad village in Seoni Malwa, a group of villagers intercepted the truck.

The occupants were allegedly dragged out and assaulted with lathis and wooden sticks. All three men sustained injuries. Najir Ahmed suffered severe head and bodily injuries and later died during treatment. Sheikh Lala and Sheikh Mustaq survived but sustained serious injuries.

Following the incident, police registered an FIR initially against unknown persons under provisions relating to rioting, wrongful restraint, attempt to murder and murder. During the investigation, officers collected physical evidence from the scene, including bloodstained soil and weapons, recorded witness statements, secured medical records, and obtained the dying declarations of the injured survivors.

Evidence relied upon by the court

The Court’s findings rested upon a combination of eyewitness testimony, medical evidence, forensic examination and recoveries made during the investigation.

The two surviving victims, Sheikh Lala and Sheikh Mustaq, consistently stated that a crowd had stopped their vehicle and assaulted them. Their accounts were corroborated by medical evidence documenting multiple injuries sustained during the attack.

Medical records showed that Najir Ahmed was brought to hospital in a critical and unconscious condition. Doctors noted extensive injuries, including swelling on the face and head, lacerated wounds, contusions and severe trauma. The post-mortem examination revealed multiple external and internal injuries, including skull fractures and significant head trauma.

“Arguments have been presented by the learned counsel for the accused persons that in the P.M. report (Ex. P–68–C) of the deceased Nazir, the cause of death is recorded as asphyxiation due to vomit blocking the throat, which makes it clear that the death of the deceased Nazir did not occur due to the injuries sustained by him. In this context, it is observable that although Dr. Shekhar Raghuvanshi (PW–22) admitted in paragraph 14 of his cross-examination that his opinion was given to the effect that his death occurred due to asphyxiation caused by vomit blocking the throat of deceased Nazir Ahmed, he made no statement to the effect that the injuries sustained by the deceased were insufficient to cause death, nor was any such suggestion given to the said doctor by the defense. From the aforementioned P.M. report (Ex. P–68–C), it is proved that the deceased sustained external and internal injuries, and it is also clear from the evidence of Dr. Shekhar Raghuvanshi (PW–22) that the deceased was brought in an unconscious state, his condition was highly critical, and his oxygen level as well as B.P. were unrecordable; thus, this argument of the defense is not acceptable that the death of the deceased did not occur due to the injuries sustained by him.” (Para 22) (Paragraph translated from Hindi to English)

The defence attempted to argue that Najir Ahmed’s death was caused by asphyxiation due to choking on vomit rather than by injuries sustained during the assault. The Court rejected this contention. It held that although the post-mortem referred to choking as the immediate mechanism of death, the evidence clearly established that Najir Ahmed had been brought to hospital in a grievously injured and unconscious state after the assault. The Court found that the fatal sequence of events was directly attributable to the brutal attack and that the injuries inflicted by the accused could not be separated from the death that followed.

The Court further relied on forensic evidence. Blood-stained weapons, clothing and other articles seized during the investigation were subjected to forensic examination. Human blood was detected on several seized items, including articles recovered from the accused and the deceased’s clothing. The Court noted that the accused failed to offer any satisfactory explanation for the presence of human blood on the recovered materials.

“According to the F.S.L. report Ex. P–103, Benzidine/Phenolphthalein and Crystal tests were performed on the said exhibits. According to the said report, human blood was found on A, B, C, D, E, F, $G_1$, $G_2$, I, K, $N_1$, and $N_2$. According to the said report, the stains on H, J, L, and M were disintegrated. In this manner, on the basis of the aforementioned F.S.L. report Ex. P–103, the presence of human blood on the aforementioned items seized from the accused persons is confirmed.” (Para 78) (Paragraph translated from Hindi to English)

“In the present case, blood-stained items were seized directly from the houses under the possession of the accused persons, on which human blood was found. The seizure proceedings have been duly proved by the prosecution, and according to the F.S.L. report, the chain of custody of the seized exhibits also remained intact. The police station daily log entry (Rojnamcha Sanha) of the proceedings from the date of the incident has also been produced. Under these circumstances, the burden of proof to provide an explanation was upon the accused persons, which was not given. Therefore, the aforementioned legal precedents are not applicable to the present case.” (Para 84) (Paragraph translated from Hindi to English)

Common object and unlawful assembly

A central issue before the Court was whether the accused could be held collectively liable for murder under Sections 302 and 149 IPC.

After evaluating the evidence, the Court concluded that the accused had formed; an unlawful assembly armed with lathis and dandas and had acted in furtherance of a common object. The attack was neither spontaneous nor isolated. Rather, the group acted collectively, used force and violence, and jointly assaulted the victims.

The Court held that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused, acting as members of an unlawful assembly, intentionally assaulted Najir Ahmed with sticks and clubs in a manner that was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. It further found that the assaults on Sheikh Lala and Sheikh Mustaq amounted to an attempt to murder.

“An observation of all the circumstances available on the record establishes the involvement of the accused persons and that the death of the deceased Nazir Ahmed was caused due to the assault. Both the other injured victims, Shekh Lala and Sayyad Mushtaq, were also present along with the deceased. It stands proved that injuries were caused to the injured Shekh Lala on the neck and chest, and to the injured Sayyad Mushtaq on the head, arm, and other vital parts. Therefore, looking at the weapons used by the accused persons, the nature of the injuries of the injured victims, and the facts and circumstances leading to the death of their other companion Nazir Ahmed, the intention of the accused persons to commit murder can be inferred.” (Para 93) (Paragraph translated from Hindi to English)

In one of the key findings of the judgment, the Court observed that the accused, armed with deadly weapons, had formed an unlawful assembly, committed rioting and, in prosecution of their common object, murdered Najir Ahmed while attempting to murder the two surviving victims.

Court recognises mob lynching as an aggravating circumstance

The sentencing portion of the judgment is particularly significant because the Court expressly characterised the crime as a case of mob lynching. While considering punishment, Judge Tabassum Khan identified the following aggravating factors:

• The prosecution had proved that the accused committed mob lynching.
• The accused formed an unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapons and engaged in rioting.
• The assault was carried out with exceptional brutality.
• Najir Ahmed suffered extensive injuries that resulted in his death.
• The attack also caused serious injuries to other victims.

The Court observed that the violence inflicted upon the victims reflected a high degree of brutality and collective criminality, warranting severe punishment.

Why the court rejected the death penalty

Despite finding the accused guilty of murder in a mob-lynching incident, the Court declined to impose capital punishment. Relying upon the established “rarest of rare” doctrine governing death penalty cases, the Court held that the circumstances did not justify the imposition of the death sentence. Instead, it sentenced all seven convicts to imprisonment for life under Section 302 read with Section 149 IPC.

“For murder, there is a provision up to the death penalty, but in the legal precedent Bachan Singh Versus State of Punjab A.I.R. 1980 S.C. 898, it has been held by the Honorable Supreme Court that the death penalty should be awarded only in the “rarest of rare cases”. In the legal precedent Santosh Kumar Singh Versus State through C.B.I. (2010) 9 SCC 747, it has also been opined that when the court has to choose an alternative between life imprisonment and the death penalty, the option of life imprisonment should generally be chosen, unless there are such exceptional circumstances that make the death penalty inevitable. In this regard, the legal precedent Machi Singh Versus State of Punjab (1983) 3 SCC 470 is also followed.” (Para 102) (Paragraph translated from Hindi to English)

The convicts were also sentenced to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment under Section 307 read with Section 149 IPC for the attempted murder of the surviving victims, and three years’ rigorous imprisonment under Section 148 IPC for rioting while armed with deadly weapons. Fines were additionally imposed.

Significance of the judgment

The judgment stands out for two reasons. First, it represents a rare instance where a trial court has explicitly described the offence as mob lynching and treated that finding as a distinct aggravating circumstance while determining punishment. Second, the Court’s reasoning underscores the application of collective liability principles under Section 149 IPC to vigilante violence carried out by groups acting in concert.

At a time when incidents of violence linked to allegations of cattle transportation and cow smuggling continue to generate legal and constitutional concerns, the ruling sends a clear message that vigilante groups cannot substitute themselves for law enforcement and that collective violence resulting in death will attract the gravest criminal consequences under the law.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Related:

Mob lynching: Three separate incidents surface, even minors and partially disabled Muslims not safe

Another cow lynching in Nashik, one dead

Maharashtra’s shame: Cow lynching episode reported in Nashik

Allahabad HC points out misuse of cow slaughter law

K’taka: Bail to cow vigilante, Puneeth Kerehalli, accused of killing Muslim man

Cow vigilantism casts its ugly shadow on Maharashtra

Allahabad HC calls out misuse of law in cow slaughter case as only cow dung recovered from scene

The post Court recognises mob lynching as aggravating factor, sentences seven to life for 2022 cow-vigilantism killing appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The protesters foot march happened days after the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which protects the mosque, wrote to the district administration to not allow any “large gathering” on June 10, even as the campaign was building up. However, under the banner of temple Shri Chakradhar Swami National Heritage Conservation Committee and several Jain organisations, a march was organised from Hostel ground to the district collectorate, covering nearly a kilometre.

Apart from Gujaratis, several followers of Chakradhar Swami from Amravati and other districts in Maharashtra participated along with local residents, holding placards and banners. Among the participants was Bhavesh Patel, who was released on bail after his conviction in the Ajmer Dargah blast case of 2007 investigated by the National Investigation Agency. Patel had by then become a self-styled godman, assuming the name of “Swami Muktanand” reported Indian Express.

Protesters handed a memorandum to Bharuch Collector Navnath Gavhane and demanded preservation of the monument to its original structure. The memorandum states that a drive was carried out to create public awareness in Gujarat and Maharashtra by the followers of Chakradhar Swami from May 18-23. Signatures of over 35,000 were taken, along with their mobile phone numbers.

Muktanand Swami alias Bhavesh Patel of Bharuch said, “The Jama Masjid has its origin in the birthplace of an ancient Jain temple, and the birthplace of Swami Chakradhar of Maharashtra. The Islamic rulers had converted the monument into a mosque. The Masjid is presently under the possession of the ASI. We have come to know that the rules and regulations of the ASI are not followed, as some people are involved in making changes in the existing structure. Actions should be taken against those who are involved in alterations or changes made to the historically protected monument.”

Quick to set the record straight, however Bharuch district collector Dr. Navnath Gavhane said, “There is no law-and-order situation. District Superintendent of Police, District magistrate office and ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) officials are maintaining it. We have appealed to people to refrain from making any generalised comments about the monument or believing in rumours and misunderstandings. The ASI is a competent authority to decide about the monument.”

Over the past decades, far right groups have been consistently mobilising to “re-claim” Mosques and Dargahs in campaigns that threaten the cultural and religious rights of the religious minority.

Related:

ASI, Gujarat: Will Bharuch’s 700 year old Jama Masjid be the next target of right-wing saffron grab and terror?

Bhojshala Judgment: MP High Court declares Dhar site a Saraswati Temple, ends Namaz rights at complex

The post Despite ASI’s warning protesters in Bharuch march to collector to ‘preserve original identity’ of Bharuch mosque appeared first on SabrangIndia.