In a detailed representation submitted to the authorities, the organisation has argued that the residents of Kandapara Longjap Taungya, Padumoni Taungya, Hatijur Taungya and 9 No. Kheroni Taungya cannot legally be treated as ordinary encroachers on forestland. According to the representation, these villages were established under the Taungya system—a forest management arrangement created and administered by the Forest Department itself—which settled families within forest areas in return for their labour in forestry operations. The organisation has further contended that any attempt to evict these residents without first recognising and verifying their rights under the Forest Rights Act would violate both the statutory protections contained in the legislation and repeated directions issued by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

At one level, the dispute concerns four villages facing the threat of displacement. At another, it raises far-reaching questions about the implementation of one of India’s most significant social justice legislations. The controversy unfolding in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest goes to the heart of a long-standing tension in India’s forest governance framework: how should the law treat communities that were settled in forests through state policy, contributed labour to the development of forest landscapes for generations, and yet never received formal recognition of their rights over the land they occupied?

The issue is particularly significant because the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006) was enacted precisely to address what Parliament described as the “historical injustice” suffered by forest-dwelling communities whose customary and occupation-based rights were either ignored or never formally recorded. Far from excluding Taungya settlements from its protection, the legislation expressly recognises them as a distinct category of forest villages and provides mechanisms for the recognition of their rights and, ultimately, the conversion of such settlements into revenue villages. Yet nearly two decades after the enactment of the law, residents of many forest villages in Assam continue to exist in a state of legal uncertainty, vulnerable to eviction despite the protections ostensibly guaranteed by Parliament.

The present controversy therefore extends beyond the immediate fate of the affected villages. It raises fundamental questions about whether communities specifically recognised under the Forest Rights Act can be subjected to eviction before the statutory process for recognition of rights has been completed. It also exposes a deeper contradiction within forest administration itself. The families presently facing eviction are not alleged to have recently occupied reserve forest land. Rather, they belong to settlements whose origins lie in a state-sponsored forestry system that depended upon their labour and permitted their occupation for decades. The attempt to now classify these communities as illegal occupants invites scrutiny not only of the legality of the eviction notices themselves, but also of the larger failure to resolve the historical status of forest villages in Assam.

To understand why the AIUFWP has described the proposed evictions as unlawful, it is necessary to revisit both the history of the Taungya system and the legal protections that Parliament sought to create through the Forest Rights Act.

A forest department that created settlements now calls their residents encroachers

For more than a century, the people living in Kandapara Longjap Taungya, Padumoni Taungya, Hatijur Taungya and 9 No. Kheroni Taungya in Assam’s Nagaon Forest Division have occupied a peculiar position in India’s forest governance framework. Their villages were not spontaneous encroachments. They were settlements created and sustained under the colonial and post-colonial Taungya system, a system designed by the Forest Department itself to secure a stable labour force for forestry operations. Yet today, these very communities are being served eviction notices and labelled “encroachers.”

The contradiction is stark. A state institution that historically settled families inside forests for the purpose of forest management is now seeking to remove their descendants by treating them as unlawful occupants. The legal problem is even more serious. The proposed evictions appear to be directly contrary to the provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA), a legislation enacted precisely to remedy such historical injustices.

The controversy unfolding in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest is therefore not merely a dispute over land. It is a test of whether the Forest Rights Act will be implemented in Assam in the manner Parliament intended, or whether communities specifically recognised by the Act will continue to face displacement despite statutory protection.

The forgotten history of the Taungya system

Understanding why these evictions are problematic requires understanding who the Taungya residents are.

The Taungya system was introduced by the British colonial administration as a method of forest management. Landless peasants and shifting cultivators were settled in forest areas and permitted to cultivate land while simultaneously providing labour for forestry operations, timber extraction and plantation work. The arrangement supplied the colonial Forest Department with a dependable workforce while reducing the costs of forest management.

In Assam, Taungya settlements were established throughout the colonial period. Historical studies show that these settlements functioned primarily as labour colonies for the Forest Department. Residents were expected to perform forestry work in exchange for limited cultivation rights and habitation. Over time, however, these temporary settlements evolved into permanent villages as generations of families continued to reside there.

Professor Chandan Kumar Sharma and Indrani Sarma, in their study on forest villages and forest dwellers in Assam, explain that forest villages and Taungya settlements were integral to colonial forest governance. They were not illegal occupations of forest land but settlements consciously established by state authorities to support forestry operations.

The history of the Lutumari Longjap settlements is consistent with this broader pattern. Indeed, official records produced by the Assam Government itself demonstrate that families were deliberately settled under the Taungya system in the Kaki and Lutumari Reserved Forest areas. A June 7, 1974 communication from the Assam Forest Department directed authorities to provide temporary shelter to hundreds of evicted families under the Taungya system in Kaki Reserved Forest and Lutumari Longjap Reserved Forest after proper screening by designated committees.

This document is critically important. It shows that occupation of these areas was not clandestine or unlawful. The state itself facilitated settlement under an official policy framework.

The present attempt to classify residents of these villages as encroachers therefore raises an obvious question: how can people settled by the Forest Department under a recognised Taungya scheme subsequently be treated as illegal occupants?

The Forest Rights Act, 2006 explicitly recognises Taungya Villages

The Forest Rights Act leaves little ambiguity on this issue. One of the most significant features of the FRA is that it expressly recognises forest villages and Taungya settlements. Section 2(f) defines “forest village” to include settlements established by Forest Departments for forestry operations and specifically includes “all types of Taungya settlements.”

This inclusion was not accidental. Parliament enacted the FRA to address what the statute itself describes as the “historical injustice” suffered by forest-dwelling communities whose customary rights were never recognised during colonial rule and continued to remain unrecorded after independence. The Act acknowledges that state forest policies systematically excluded forest dwellers from legal recognition despite their long-standing relationship with forests.

Taungya communities were among the clearest examples of this injustice. For decades they supplied labour to the Forest Department, helped create and maintain forest landscapes, and lived under state supervision without ever receiving secure tenure over the lands they occupied. The FRA was designed to correct precisely this situation.

Consequently, the law not only recognises Taungya settlements but also creates a pathway for their legal transformation. Section 3(1)(h) specifically recognises rights relating to the “conversion of all forest villages, old habitations, unsurveyed villages and other villages in forests” into revenue villages.

The legislative intent is therefore unmistakable: forest villages and Taungya settlements are to be regularised and recognised, not erased through eviction.

AIUFWP’s case against the evictions

According to the representation submitted by the AIUFWP, the affected families possess a range of documentary evidence demonstrating their long association with the settlements, including Taungya allotment records, annual khiraji pattas, electoral documents and other official records. The organisation argues that these documents, read alongside the historical record of state-sponsored settlement under the Taungya system, fundamentally undermine attempts to characterise the residents as illegal occupants of forest land.

The organisation has also drawn attention to a June 7, 1974 communication issued by the Assam Forest Department relating to settlement under the Taungya system in Kaki Reserved Forest and Lutumari Longjap Reserved Forest. According to the AIUFWP, the document demonstrates that the state itself facilitated the settlement of families in these areas and therefore cannot now ignore the historical basis of their occupation while pursuing eviction proceedings.

Most importantly, the representation argues that the Forest Rights Act creates a statutory bar against eviction until the process of recognition and verification of rights has been completed. Since the affected villages fall within a category of settlements expressly recognised under the legislation, the organisation contends that any eviction undertaken without completing this process would be unlawful.

The complete document may be read here.

The Most Serious Legal Problem: Section 4(5) absolutely prohibits eviction before rights recognition

Even if there were disputes regarding individual claims, the FRA contains a clear statutory safeguard. Section 4(5) states: “No member of a forest dwelling Scheduled Tribe or other traditional forest dweller shall be evicted or removed from forest land under his occupation till the recognition and verification procedure is complete.”

This provision is central to the architecture of the FRA. It recognises that forest dwellers historically faced displacement before their claims could be heard. Parliament therefore prohibited eviction until the entire process of recognition, verification and adjudication of rights had been completed.

The legal consequence is straightforward. Before any eviction can lawfully occur:

• Forest Rights Committees must be constituted.
• Claims must be invited.
• Claims must be verified.
• Appeals must be exhausted.
• Rights must be finally determined.

Only after completion of this statutory process can questions of removal arise. According to the representations made regarding the four Taungya villages, no meaningful FRA implementation process has been initiated and no recognition exercise has been completed. If this is correct, eviction notices issued at this stage would be fundamentally inconsistent with Section 4(5).

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MOTA) has repeatedly clarified that no evictions are permissible

The legal position becomes even clearer when one examines official directions issued by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the nodal ministry responsible for implementation of the FRA. In April 2015, the Ministry expressly directed State Level Monitoring Committees to ensure that Section 4(5) is implemented “in letter and spirit” and that no forest dweller is evicted or removed until the FRA process is complete.

The Ministry also repeatedly expressed concern regarding wrongful rejection of claims, lack of communication of rejection orders, failures in appeals processes and improper implementation by state authorities. It instructed states to review doubtful rejections and ensure that rightful claimants are not denied protection.

Subsequent communications reiterated that implementation cannot be rushed, procedural safeguards cannot be bypassed, and recognition of rights is incomplete until appeals are exhausted and records of rights are created.

These directions are highly relevant in Assam because the state has historically faced criticism for weak implementation of the FRA. The current dispute appears to arise precisely because rights-recognition processes have either not commenced or remain incomplete in the affected villages.

The Supreme Court’s 2019 intervention strengthens the protection

The legality of the proposed evictions must also be examined in light of developments before the Supreme Court. In February 2019, the Supreme Court initially issued directions concerning claimants whose forest rights claims had been rejected. However, following widespread protests and more than a dozen legal interventions in the ongoing Wild Life First case, interventions that high-lighted the misconceived framework of the original order, the SC the Court subsequently stayed the eviction-related consequences of its own order! In fact, Sokala Gond, Nivada Rana, AIUFWP backed by Citizens for Justice and Peace, were among the first who filed an Intervention Application in the Supreme Court to prevent the mass eviction of Adivasis and traditional forest dwellers. The application argued that the FRA vests independent rights in Adivasi women, and that evictions violate their constitutional rights. Finally, MOTA itself supported these contentions (the matter is ongoing). Reports on this crucial legal intervention may be read here.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs thereafter circulated a detailed communication to all States explaining the Court’s stay order and reiterating the necessity of reviewing wrongful rejections, ensuring proper procedures, communicating reasons for rejection, allowing appeals and preventing evictions before completion of statutory processes.

The significance of this history is often overlooked. The central concern before the Supreme Court was that thousands of claims across India may have been rejected without proper adherence to FRA procedures. The Court’s intervention effectively reinforced the principle that forest dwellers cannot be removed merely because authorities assert that they lack recognised rights.

In the case of the four Taungya villages, the issue is even stronger because these communities belong to a category specifically recognised under the FRA itself.

Historical records undermine the “encroacher” narrative

The language of “encroachment” occupies a powerful place in public discourse. Yet its application to Taungya villages is legally and historically problematic. An encroacher is ordinarily understood as a person who unlawfully occupies land without authority.

The residents of the four villages claim the opposite: that they possess long-standing documentary evidence demonstrating their lawful association with the settlements. According to representations submitted to the Assam government, residents possess Aadhaar cards, voter identity cards, Taungya allotment documents, annual khiraji pattas and even historical records linked to wartime service.

More fundamentally, the historical record demonstrates that Taungya settlements were established by state authorities themselves. Academic research on Assam’s forest villages documents how generations of landless peasants were settled within reserved forests to serve as labourers for forestry operations. These communities were denied secure tenure despite their contribution to forest administration and conservation.

The FRA was enacted precisely because Parliament recognised that such communities had suffered historical injustice.

To describe them today as encroachers without first determining their statutory rights risks reversing the very objective of the legislation.

Assam’s longstanding failure to implement the FRA

The present controversy also exposes a larger governance problem. Nearly two decades after enactment of the FRA, implementation in Assam remains deeply uneven. There have been documented persistent difficulties in recognising the rights of forest dwellers, especially among non-tribal forest village residents whose historical circumstances differ from those in central India.

Forest villages across Assam have long existed in a legal limbo. Settled by the state, dependent on agricultural cultivation, and often possessing decades of documentary evidence, many residents nevertheless remain without formal tenure security. The result has been a recurring cycle of uncertainty, conflict and eviction threats. The four villages in Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest appear to be the latest manifestation of this unresolved problem.

The constitutional dimension

Beyond statutory violations, the issue raises constitutional concerns. The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted Article 21 of the Constitution as encompassing rights to livelihood, dignity and shelter. Communities that have lived in officially recognised settlements for generations cannot be dispossessed through administrative action that disregards statutory protections.

The FRA itself is a welfare legislation enacted to realise constitutional commitments to equality, social justice and protection of vulnerable communities. Any interpretation that permits eviction of Taungya residents before recognition of rights would undermine these constitutional objectives.

What the law requires now

The legal position emerging from the FRA, Ministry guidelines and Supreme Court proceedings is clear. Before any eviction can occur:

1. Eviction notices should be withdrawn or kept in abeyance.
2. Forest Rights Committees should be constituted in the affected villages.
3. Individual and community claims should be invited and processed.
4. Historical records relating to Taungya settlements should be examined.
5. Claims must be verified through the statutory process.
6. Appeals must be exhausted.
7. Revenue village conversion under Section 3(1)(h) must be considered.
8. No coercive action should occur until the entire process is completed.

Anything less would defeat both the text and purpose of the Forest Rights Act.

Conclusion: A test case for the Forest Rights Act in Assam

The eviction notices issued to residents of Kandapara Longjap Taungya, Padumoni Taungya, Hatijur Taungya and 9 No. Kheroni Taungya are not merely administrative notices. They represent a collision between two competing visions of forest governance.

One vision views long-settled forest communities as encroachers whose presence must be removed. The other—the vision embodied in the Forest Rights Act—recognises that many of these communities were settled, used and controlled by the state itself, and that their continued insecurity is the product of historical injustice rather than illegality.

The FRA was enacted to resolve that injustice. It specifically recognises Taungya settlements, provides for their conversion into revenue villages, and unequivocally prohibits eviction before recognition and verification of rights are completed. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has repeatedly reaffirmed this position, and the Supreme Court’s interventions have further underscored the need for procedural safeguards.

The question before Assam is therefore not whether these communities should be evicted. The question is whether a law enacted by Parliament to protect forest dwellers will finally be implemented in the state in the manner intended. Until that process is completed, the attempt to remove residents of these Taungya villages stands on deeply questionable legal ground and risks perpetuating the very historical injustice that the Forest Rights Act was enacted to undo.

Related:

Weaponising Forest Laws: The systemic criminalisation of Tharu tribals in Lakhimpur Kheri

How FCA 2023 amendments seek to undermine Adivasi land protections guaranteed in Forest Rights Act, 2006: SC

AIUFWP to LoP Rahul Gandhi: Act now on forest rights

Forest Conservation Amendment Act, 2023: A challenge to Adivasi land rights and environmental protections

Inside India’s forest lands a battle for land and resources: Adivasis & Forest dwellers

TN: 158 people in two villages get title deeds under the Forest Rights Act, 2006

The post A test for the Forest Rights Act in Assam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With an absence of transparency –names and identities – of deleted and new voter influx—the question we ask is this:

Are new voter registrations transparent following due process, and what criteria were implemented to simply deny existing voters their right to vote?

The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) shows clear data errors across the country. Instead of a clear, transparent and logical process, the official figures leave 2.79 crore voters (27.9 million) unaccounted for. This means that millions have been disenfranchised without either explanation, reasons given or judicial scrutiny: besides this huge number of Indian electors have not even been properly categorised in the act of removal/deletion: are they deceased, have they shifted/moved their location (?) or do they have duplicate entries? This unilateral and arbitrary deletion/exclusion has already –in states ruled by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – cost them survival besides the right to vote: People removed from these lists are today in danger of losing their government benefits we repeat, without any independent scrutiny by an independent judicial authority.

In West Bengal and Bihar alone, the state governments –elected on the basis of this faultily implemented SIR–have simply announced –without policy discussion or judicial scrutiny –that the ‘new voters lists’ will be regarded as the final electoral list and linked this to welfare programmes. Both states are now ruled by the extreme right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a political behemoth that has –in close collusion with a non-transparent Election Commission of India (ECI) been a “beneficiary” of this SIR process.

Put clearly, if a person’s name is removed from the voter list, their ration card is deactivated, monthly cash transfers are stopped, and even their bank accounts face cancellation. There are also local reports of the possibility of unilateral deletion from agricultural land records, especially if you are a disenfranchised voter from Murshidabad and Malda, Muslim majority districts! This policy effectively treats a deleted voter as someone who has lost their official status as a citizen without the final adjudication of their citizenship status.

State & UT wise deletion data discrepancy

The ECI’s entire 2025-2026 SIR process was/is 3-layered:

• Enumeration Phase
• Publication of Draft Roll, Claims and
• Objections Period and publication of the Final Roll.

A close scrutiny of the official electoral data spanning 14 States and Union Territories where the SIR was hurriedly conducted tells a mathematically impossible story.

This exclusive deep-dive investigation by Vote for Democracy and SabrangIndia reveals the dark holes behind the mass deletions.

The official SIR data released by the ECI for 14 States and UTs contains significant inconsistencies. While the ECI has published aggregate figures of additions and deletions, it has not provided complete details explaining how the final electoral rolls were arrived at. This makes independent verification of the data difficult.

According to the ECI final data, 5.29 crore electors were deleted during the SIR exercise. However, the ECI has not disclosed complete details regarding these electors, including the categories under which they were deleted, their constituency-wise distribution, whether all such deletions attained finality, or whether any cases remained under adjudication, appeal, or other verification processes at the time of publication of the final rolls.

1. The ECI has reported that 1.87 crore new electors were added through Forms 6 and 6A applications^[1]. However, it has not specifically disclosed the categories to which these electors belong, whether they were first-time voters, previously deleted electors seeking re-enrolment, migrated voters, overseas electors, or any other category. Nor has it disclosed the district-wise and constituency-wise break-up of these additions.
2. The SIR exercise began with 61.38 crore electors. After deleting 5.29 crore electors and adding 1.87 crore electors, the final electoral roll should have contained approximately 57.96 crore electors. However, the final electoral rolls published by the ECI show only 55.17 crore electors including 1.87 crore newly added electors, leaving an unexplained gap of about 2.79 crore “Vanished Electors”
3. Further, a total of 7.16 crore electors (5.29 crore deletions and 1.87 crore additions) were affected by the SIR process, yet the ECI has not disclosed sufficient particulars regarding their status, category, or basis of inclusion/deletion. The absence of such information raises serious concerns regarding transparency, accuracy, and the reliability of the published electoral data.

Note: We have attempted to rely on figures and facts available from the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the respective Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs). Wherever neither the ECI nor the CEOs have provided the relevant data, we have been compelled to rely on information reported in the press, as no official alternative is available to the public. Since the ECI has not made the complete data available in a scientific and statistically verifiable format, it has become necessary to depend on multiple secondary sources for the purposes of this analysis.

Who then are these unexplained 5.29 crore final voters from 14 states, what has been the process followed for their inclusion into the final Voter’s List? The Table below explains the illogical process of deletions/inclusions, state-wise[2]:

Total deletion in SIR across the 14 States/UTs and Form 6/6A/additions

Bihar

The final press release^[4] of the ECI related to Bihar dated September 30, 2025 stated 3.66 lakh names were permanently deleted after detailed statutory verification, while 21.53 lakh eligible electors were added through Form-6 (First Time Voter) applications during claims-and-objections process. We have downloaded the press release and it may be accessed here. As a result, the final electoral roll stood at approximately 7.42 crore electors. At first glance, the Commission presented these figures as evidence of a successful correction mechanism that enabled genuine electors to re-enter the electoral database. However, a closer examination of the numbers reveals a significant discrepancy.

The pre-SIR electoral roll contained 7.89 crore electors, whereas the finalised roll contained 7.42 crore electors. This represents a net reduction of approximately 47 lakh electors. Yet the numerical explanation offered by the Commission does not fully account for this decline.

If 3.66 lakh names were permanently removed after verification and 21.53 lakh electors were subsequently added, the total deletions and additions totals 25.19 lakh electors. However, the final roll has an unexplained deficit of 21.81 lakh Voters whose removal/absence has simply not been explained by the ECI!

Questions raised in Investigation:

• Who are these Voters, from which Districts in Bihar and what is their gender and other identity?
• Do the Bihari and Indian people not deserve to know?

Conclusion: The entire SIR process therefore has been clouded in opacity. Reasons are that there has been absence of any clarity on the following category-wise distinctions and therefore no reconciliation of possible overlaps:

A. The ECI has not disclosed who these newly added electors are or the districts and constituencies in which they have been added. This information is crucial for understanding the impact of the SIR process.

B. The ECI has stated that electors whose names were deleted during the SIR Enumeration process may seek re-enrolment by filing Form 6

C. However, Form No. 6 [only for the registration of new voter as amended], as amended[5] by the Ministry of Law and Justice through the Notification dated 17.06.2022, requires every applicant to declare that he or she has never been enrolled as an elector before. This creates a serious difficulty for persons whose names were deleted during the SIR process. Such individuals were previously registered voters and therefore cannot truthfully make a declaration that they were never electors.

D. The requirement effectively compels deleted electors to submit a false declaration in order to seek re-enrolment. This is particularly concerning because the ECI’s own guidelines warn against furnishing false information or making incorrect declarations in electoral forms.

E. Form 6a additions ( Overseas Voters-(New Voters post 2011/shifted Voters) who and in which districts/constituencies they have been added: Form 6a additions ( Overseas Voters) who and in which districts/constituencies have this category of voters been added

F. Form 7 (permanent deletions by a process initiated by others) with no details of the veracity or transparency of the process – who has been removed and from which districts/constituencies they have been removed;

G. Form 8 relates to shifting of residence/correction of entries in existing electoral roll)– which Voters have been removed on accordance of shifting and from which districts/constituencies they have been removed & which Voter details have been corrected.

Please note that giving any false statement made in the DECLARATION portion is a punishable offence under Section 31 of the Representation of People Act 1950 with imprisonment with term which may extend to one year or with fine or with both);

Declaration form can be seen/accessed here.

West Bengal

On February 28, 2026, the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, released a press release^[6] announcing the publication of the final electoral roll and electorate data. In West Bengal, the baseline electorate started at 7,66,37,529 names. The Commission notified deletions in the Draft Roll of 58,20,899 Voters, which, thereafter, inexplicably ballooned to a Final Deletion figure of 83.86 Lakh names—an un-categorised surge of over 25.65 Lakh voter removals.

When applying the documented Final Deletions and adding the 1,82,036 new voters from Form 6/6A, the mathematically expected final roll should logically total 6,84,33,565 (7,66,37,529 – 83.86 Lakh + 1,82,036). Instead, the published data of General Electors post SIR in West Bengal[7] depicts the same to be 6,44,52,609.

This creates an unexplained expulsion/ decrease in the Electoral Rolls of 39,80,956 electors, proving that the final published database does not reconcile with the documented additions and removals.

Questions raised in Investigation:

• Who are these 39, 80, 956 Voters, from which Districts in Bengal and what is their gender and other identity?
• Do the Bengali and Indian people not deserve to know?

(Even if we count the 27.10 lakh removed on basis of “logical discrepancies”, the figures leave an unexplained gap of 12, 70, 956 electors, a number still unexplained given the mathematical subtraction.)[8]

Conclusion: The entire SIR process therefore has been clouded in opacity. Reasons are that there has been absence of any clarity on the following category-wise distinctions and therefore no reconciliation of possible overlaps:

Uttar Pradesh

The electoral database for Uttar Pradesh began with a pre-SIR electorate of 15, 44, 30,092 voters (15.44 crore). According to the Election Commission’s final SIR data published on April 10, 2026[9], 2, 88, 74, 067 names were deleted from the Draft Roll, while 2, 04, 45, 300 names were ultimately deleted in the Final Roll. The Commission therefore recorded that there has been an addition of 84, 28, 767 electors between the Draft and Final Rolls which may have occurred due to redressal hearings, or registrations through Forms 6 and 6A. However, the ECI has failed to published the category wise addition of 84, 28, 767 electors in the Final Electoral Roll that now stands at 13, 39, 84,792 voters (13.40 crore).

Link to the downloaded document: https://x.com/ceoup/status/2042536090402459712?s=20

The official figures for Uttar Pradesh reveal a striking anomaly! The electorate, after the conduct of the SIR in the state,  exactly equals the pre-SIR electorate minus the final deletions (15, 44, 30, 792 – 2,04,45,300 = 13,39,84,792). In other words, the final roll can be fully explained without accounting for a single one of the 84, 28, 767 newly added electors. This implies an unexplained increase of 84, 28, 767 electors (84.29 lakh)—a figure for which no corresponding category of deletion or adjustment has been disclosed in the published data.

Questions raised in Investigation:

Again, vis a vis Uttar Pradesh (UP) we ask who are these 84, 28, 767 voters and do the people of UP and India not deserve to know their names and the districts where they have been added/included as Voters?

Conclusion: Such a massive number of additions without granular data on categories deleted and added, and how, raised more questions than it answers

Link to the downloaded document: https://x.com/ceoup/status/2042535765822050811?s=20

Assam

Similarly, in Assam[10] what was conducted was a different process. Here, in this state already racked by a Citizenship Crisis of unspeakable dimensions, what took place was a Special Revision (SR) of the rolls. The difference between the SIR and SR is this: Updation of the existing Electoral Rolls takes place through house-to-house visits. Hence in this north-easten state, as many as 29656 BLOs (Block Level Officers) conducted the exercise and visited the homes of 2,52,02,775 electors present in the pre-SR rolls. In addition a new category of persons, BLAs (Block Level Agents) assisted the process. [This category of persons while open to all political parties was criticised as favouring the ruling BJP who have a formidable network of “Panna Pramukhs” (area wise agents). These BLAs were “trained” by the Election Commission through a new initiative.]

Link to the downloaded document: https://newsonair.gov.in/eci-publishes-final-voter-list-for-special-revision-in-assam-extends-west-

The Draft electoral rolls published on December 12, 2025 after the Special Revision contained 2, 52, 01, 624 electors. Only 1151 electors, according to the ECI were deleted in total at this stage from the existing rolls. However, a scrutiny of the Final Rolls published on February 10, 2026 contained 2, 49, 58.139 electors. This significant deletion, that is the removal of 2, 43, 485 electors after the Draft Rolls were published has not been explained or defined by the ECI.

Reasons for the removal of these Voters and details of the hearings and adjudications have not been made public. No details are available about the persons and process who filed objections for such a large number of electors after the publication of the Draft Roll in Assam. The actual published final roll is 2,49,58,139, presenting a structural reduction of 2,44,636 electors that are missing from the final elector roll.

Questions raised in Investigation:

Put differently, our investigation of the available official numbers from the ECI shows that as many 2,44,636 Voters have disappeared from the Final Voters list and these include some of those originally dropped at the Draft Roll stage as also some from the Form 6/6A additions!

• Do the people of Assam and India not deserve to know who the deletion voters are (their names) and from which districts in Assam they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Gujarat

Pre-SIR, the state of Gujarat contained 5,08,43,436 electors. However, the Draft Electoral Rolls published the names of 4,34,70,109 electors. Around 73.7 Lakh (73,72,711) names of the electors were deleted in the Draft Roll initially, in the final roll published^[11] on February 17, 2026 the number recorded was 4,40,30,725 electors ECI’s official figures reveal that there were 5.60 Lakh additions through various modes including Form 6/6A.

Link to the downloaded document: https://newsonair.gov.in/election-commission-of-india-releases-final-electoral-roll-for-gujarat/

Question raised in Investigation:

Examining these figures leads to the following mathematical conclusion: an expected final electoral database of 4,40,30,725 electors and 68,12,711 were the final deleted voters. (68,12,711 + 5.60 Lakh = 73,72,711 electors).

The Gujarat figures reveal that the initial draft deletion of 73,72,711 electors in the Draft Roll and 68,12,711 final deletions & about 5.60 lakh additions in the Final Roll. However, the published data does not clarify whether these 5.60 lakh additions were entirely fresh inclusions through Forms 6/6A or whether some were electors initially omitted from the Draft Roll and later restored/re-enrolled. The Election Commission has also not published a category-wise reconciliation showing how many deletions occurred through Form 7, how many claims were accepted, how many cases remain under adjudication, or how many electors were restored. In the absence of such data, the movement of electors between deletion, restoration, and addition categories cannot be independently verified.

Question raised in Investigation:

However, the published SIR Final Roll is 4,40,30,725. This again leaves an unexplained decline in deletions of a 5.60 lakh Voters.

Do the people of Gujarat and India not deserve to know who the deletion voters are (their names) and from which districts in Gujarat they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Madhya Pradesh

Before the SIR exercise, Madhya Pradesh had 5.74 crore registered voters. After the draft voter list was published on December 23, 2025, the Election Commission reported having received enrolment forms of 5,31,31,983 electors: ECI explained that as many as 42,74,160 deletions were carried out due to non-receipt of forms. A point to note is: It is strange that not even a single enrolment form received was rejected!. Another curious fact is that in MP –something not observed from an analysis in other states–as many as 8, 49, 082 electors who failed to submit enrolment forms were permitted “re-entry” into electoral rolls during the adjudication process after the publication of the Draft Rolls.

The final figures for the state, released by the ECI on February 21, 2026[12], the Commission recorded 34,25,078 final deletions and 8,49,082 new voters added through various modes including acceptance of Forms 6 and 6A.

Link to our document: https://x.com/PTI_News/status/2025184572451836070?s=20

Despite the abovementioned figures, the published Final Voter List contains only 5,39,81,065 voters.

Question Raised in Investigation

The Madhya Pradesh (MP) figures do not fully reconcile. Starting SIR with 5.74 crore electors and after 34,25,078 final deletions and 8,49,082 additions, the expected final electorate should be significantly higher than the published figure of 5,39,81,065.

The data also shows that 8,49,082 electors who had initially not submitted enrolment forms were later brought back during adjudication. However, the Election Commission has not explained how these electors were classified, nor has it accounted for the gap between the expected and published final figures, leaving a portion of the electorate mathematically unexplained.

Do the people of Madhya Pradesh (MP) and India not deserve to know as to what were the specific factors that created such an accurate process (unlike other states) that reflected the fact that all enrolment form were absolutely in-order?

Do they not have any right to know as to who were the actual new electors added through the SIR process and from which districts in Madhya Pradesh (MP) they fall?

Also, who were such old electors who had been compelled to re-enrol through the Form 6 and 6A process that essentially entails making a false declaration that they were not previous voters and from which districts in Madhya Pradesh (MP) they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Chhattisgarh

Before the SIR exercise, Chhattisgarh had about 2.12 crore registered voters. The Draft Electoral Rolls published after the first stage of scrutiny by the ECI published 1, 84, 95, 920 names. Thus, the Draft Voter List recorded 27.34 lakh deletions.

In the final figures published on February 21, 2026, the Election Commission reported a further deletion of 1,08,807 electors from the Draft Rolls while at the same time it added 2, 34, 994 new voters added through inclusions of the Forms 6 and 6A categories. Based on these numbers, voters clearly have been deleted without any category-wise explanation for the deletions.

However, the published final voter list contains only 1, 87, 30, 914 voters. This leaves an unexplained gap of nearly 25.95 lakh voters whose status is not explained in the published data. The figures do not clarify whether these voters were deleted, carried forward, kept under adjudication, or removed through any other category.

Link to our document: https://x.com/PTI_News/status/2025108711291650148?s=20

Question Raised in Investigation

• Do the people of Chhattisgarh and India not deserve to know who the deletion voters are (their names) and from which districts in Chhattisgarh they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Rajasthan

The SIR data of Rajasthan presents one of the clearest inconsistencies in the published figures. Before the SIR exercise, the state had 5,48,84,479 registered voters as per the ECI figure. The electors published in the Draft Electoral Rolls were 5,04,71,324 voters. The number of electors reflected in the final figures published^[13] on February 21, 2026 showed total 31,36,286 deletions and 2,42,760 further deletions from the draft rolls and 12,91,365 additions through Forms 6 and 6A but the status of the rest 8,56,304 electors remains unclear due to the lack of any specific classification or explanation regarding these addition) in those rolls.

There are discrepancies however. The Voters s shown by the ECI before the conduct of the SIR is less by 2,28,264 electors than the figure shows by the central CEO in its press releases. The data also fails to clearly account for the whereabouts and categorised figure of over 31 lakh-deleted electors. This discrepancy itself raises more questions than it answers!

Link to our document: https://cms.patrika.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/SIR-Final-Publication-Rajasthan.pdf

Question Raised in Investigation

The published data does not explain this difference or whereabouts of deleted voters nor the reasons behind deletions/discrepancies.

• Do the people of Rajasthan and India not deserve to know who the deletion voters are (their names) and from which districts in Rajasthan they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu began the SIR exercise with 6,41,14,587 voters. The Draft Voter List removed 97, 37, 831 names, reducing the electorate to 5,43,76,756. During the claims and objections period, 27.53 lakh voters were added through Forms 6 and 6A, while another 4.23 lakh names were deleted.

The Final Voter List published on February 23, 2026[14] stood at 5,67,07,380 voters, reflecting a net and unexplained deduction of 74,07,207 voters from the pre-SIR electorate.

Link to our document: https://x.com/airnewsalerts/status/2025924114599600147?s=20\

Question Raised in Investigation

• Do the people of Tamil Nadu and India not deserve to know who the deletion voters are (their names) and from which districts in Tamil Nadu they fall?

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Kerala

Kerala had 2,78,59,855 voters as per CEO Kerala when the SIR exercise began in November 2025. The Draft Voter List published^[15] on December 23, 2025 excluded 24,17,503 names classified as absent, dead or shifted, bringing the electorate down to 2,54,42,352 in the draft list. During the verification process, notices were issued to 19.32 lakh voters to establish their link with the 2002 electoral roll, while 17.56 lakh voters underwent hearings over logical discrepancies.

After objections were considered, 15, 11, 292 voters were added and 53,229 more names were deleted. The Final Electoral Roll published^[16] on February 21, 2026 contains 2,70,52,007 voters, a net reduction of 9,59,440 voters from the pre-SIR electorate that is unexplained by category or reasoning.

Link to our document: https://www.ceo.kerala.gov.in/uploads/sir-2026/draft-electorate-23-12-2025.pdf; https://www.ceo.kerala.gov.in/uploads/sir-2026/final_electorate_sir_2026.pdf

Question raised in Investigation:

In the absence of transparency and clear reasoning given by the ECI nor categories of additions/deletions, people of Kerala and India are in the dark of who these deleted voters are (names) and from which districts of the state they fall!

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

Goa and Andaman & Nicobar Islands

Goa had 11,85,034 registered voters before the SIR exercise. The Draft Voter List published on December 16, 2025 removed 1,00,042 names, bringing the voter count down to 10,84,992. The Election Commission also identified 1,82,403 voters as “unmapped” and 58,923 voters as having “logical discrepancies”, whose cases were later examined through notices, hearings and document checks. During the claims & objections period, 12,166 new voters were added (Form 6,6A), while 39,592 names were finally deleted, including 35,780 voters declared ineligible after scrutiny.

The final voter list published^[17] on February 21, 2026 contained 10, 57, 566 voters.

Link to our document: https://ceogoa.nic.in/PDF/SIR2026/press-note-Final-publication.pdf

Question raised in Investigation:

However, the figures raise a basic question that if 1, 00, 042 names were removed in the Draft List, why do the final figures show only 39,592 deletions? The published data does not clearly explain what happened to the remaining voters who were initially removed, or how the large number of unmapped and discrepancy-flagged voters were ultimately accounted for in the final roll.

• In the absence of clear reasoning given by the ECI nor categories of additions/deletions, people of Goa and India are in the dark of who these deleted voters are (names) and from which districts of the state they fall!

Conclusion: This opacity and non-transparency regarding the fundamental right to Vote creates suspicion, as if the entire process has been conducted in a pre-determined and partisan manner.

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands[18] had 3,10,404 registered voters before the SIR exercise. The draft voter list published on December 23, 2025 removed 64,014 names, reducing the electorate to 2,46,390. During the claims and objections period, 16,919 voters were added through Forms 6, 6A and 8, while 5,269 names were deleted.

The final voter list published on February 21, 2026 contains 2,58,040 voters, matching the additions and deletions recorded after the draft stage. However, compared to the pre-SIR electorate, the final roll is lower by 52,364 voters. While the final deletion figure records only 5,269 removals, the published data does not explain how this overall reduction of 52,364 voters was arrived at, or how many of the 64,014 names deleted in the draft list were restored after verification or not.

Linkto our document: https://x.com/Andaman_Admin/status/2025442063752511792?s=20

Question raised in Investigation:

In the absence of clear reasoning’s given by the ECI nor categories of additions/deletions, people of Andaman & Nicobar and India are in the dark of who these deleted voters are (names) and from which districts of the state they fall!

Puducherry

Puducherry had 10, 21,578 registered voters before the SIR exercise. The draft voter list published on December 16, 2025 removed 1,03,467 names, reducing the electorate to 9,18,111 voters. During the claims and objections period, 41,492 voters were added, 16,619 more names were deleted, and 1,227 voters were marked as shifted outside the state.

Link to our document: https://x.com/ceopuducherry/status/2022544949041074407?s=20

The final electoral roll published on February 14, 2026[19] contains 9,44,211 voters. While the final figures broadly reconcile with the draft roll and subsequent additions, the data leaves key questions unanswered. Of the 1,03,467 voters removed at the draft stage, the final roll remains lower than the pre-SIR electorate by 77,367 voters. The published data does not explain how many of the initially deleted voters were restored, how many of the 41,492 additions were genuinely new voters or some of were existing voters? and how many were previously deleted electors who were later reinstated after verification.

Question raised in Investigation:

In the absence of clear reasoning’s given by the ECI nor categories of additions/deletions, people of Puducherry and India are in the dark of who these deleted voters are (names) and from which districts of the state they fall!

Lakshadweep

Lakshadweep had 57,813 registered voters before the SIR exercise. The draft voter list published^[20] on December 16, 2025 removed 1,429 names, including 705 deceased voters, 210 permanently shifted voters, 472 duplicate enrolments, 41 untraceable or absent voters, and one voter who refused to sign, reducing the electorate to 56,384 voters.

Link to our document: https://www.facebook.com/100064880013259/posts/press-note-14022026-publication-of-final-electoral-roll-2026election-commission-/1363754245797230/

During the claims and objections period, 1,270 voters were added and 47 more names were deleted. The final electoral roll published on February 14, 2026 contains 57,607 voters. While the final figures broadly reconcile, the electorate remains 206 voters lower than the pre-SIR roll. The published data does not indicate whether these 206 voters were deleted during verification, shifted to another category, or excluded for any other reason.

Note: It was difficult to obtain all the relevant PDFs and official records, as several final press notes, bulletins and related documents were not readily available on the ECI website. For this reason, data was compiled from official social media posts of the Election Commission and Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs), CEO websites, press notes, and other official source links. References to the deletion of SIR bulletins and press notes from the ECI website have not been included here, as the analysis relies only on documents and data that could be independently accessed from official sources.

The major difficulty in the data analysis has been the inconsistency between the data published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the respective Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) on the same issue. In many instances, explicit data has not been provided, and even the data released by the ECI reveals discrepancies. Further, the data has not been presented in a uniform format across States and Union Territories. The ECI has failed to adhere to basic principles of data management and statistical reporting, as the data should be presented in a consistent, sequential, and standardised manner to enable accurate analysis and comparison.

No final transparency or clarity on what were the categories of removals

A macro-analysis of the database across all 14 States and UTs (except Assam) reveals a severe systemic failure in the reconciliation of electoral figures, showing that there is absolutely no final match or clarity on what were the categories of removals.

In sum, the pre-revision electorate across these States/UTs stood at 61.38 Crore. While subtracting the officially declared total “Final Deletions” of 5.29 Crore and adding the 1.87 Crore newly added Form 6 and Form 6A voters etc.—the expected final database should logically rest at 57.96 Crore.( Leaving aside Assam).

However, the officially published SIR Final Roll aggregates to a figure which is at variance and the figures given by various CEOs and the ECI at different occasions does not match and different claims are made that makes the picture too hazy to be recognized.

This failure to mathematically bridge the gap between the initial and final rolls leaves a staggering, un-reconciled macro-level discrepancy of Crores of electors. Every single state exhibits this structural dissonance. These unexplained numerical variances expose a hidden layer of alleged database manipulation. The officially recorded final deletions are completely out of consonance with the initial draft deletions 7.33 Crore and the actual net modifications executed on the ground.

Instead of providing a transparent, categorised breakdown of these removals—such as designating them as deceased, permanently shifted, or duplicate entries—the data reflects opaque, un-categorised bulk adjustments. The introduction of the clause of logical discrepancies midway in West Bengal , that to applied discriminately and arbitrarily makes the exercise smack of pre-determination and partisan administrative “purging” of the Electoral Roll and therefore the Constitutional Right to Vote!

SIR deletions linked to welfare benefits

The newly elected BJP governments in West Bengal and Bihar indicated that persons whose names were deleted from electoral rolls might also lose access to welfare benefits. In West Bengal, ministers stated that individuals removed through the SIR process would not be eligible for government schemes, though those whose cases are pending before appellate tribunals and certain applicants under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would continue to receive benefits

The West Bengal government has weaponised the outcomes of the SIR to aggressively filter beneficiaries under the public distribution system. By instructing the food and supplies department to mark the ration cards of deleted voters as inactive, the state has explicitly equated electoral exclusion with nutritional deprivation.

Individuals marked as absent, shifted, duplicate, or dead in the draft lists, alongside unmapped voters and those removed post-adjudication, now face immediate ineligibility for fundamental food security. While temporary reprieves exist for those navigating the labyrinthine appellate tribunals or seeking refuge under the Citizenship Amendment Act, these are mere pauses in a broader trajectory of exclusion. These administrative decisions post-SIR extends beyond food supplies, with over thirty lakh beneficiaries of a targeted cash transfer scheme for women also rendered ineligible following their removal from the voter database in West Bengal.

In Bihar, Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said that persons deleted from the electoral roll would be ineligible for ration and other welfare schemes, and even suggested that their bank passbooks could be cancelled in due course. The announcements have sparked concerns because the Election Commission has consistently maintained before the Supreme Court that exclusion from the electoral roll does not amount to a determination of citizenship and does not terminate an individual’s citizenship status. The move to link deletion from the electoral roll with denial of welfare benefits raises serious legal concerns, as it effectively treats exclusion from the voter list as proof of non-citizenship without any formal determination of citizenship status.

ECI launched SIR Phase-III

Following the unexplained mass deletion of voters in earlier phases, the Election Commission has now launched the controversial SIR Phase-III across 16 States and 3 UTs. The states included in this phase are Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand. The Union Territories covered are the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu and temporarily leaving out only Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh. The above States/UTs covering a total electorate of 36.73 crore voters.

While the reasons behind the deletions in the first two phases remain unclear, the exercise is now being expanded to a much larger population based on the same non-transparent and unaccountable process. The SIR process conducted in 2025-26 and now expanded to other states is a violation of both Election Law and Rules.

The Commission must account for every voter affected by the revision process. In an exercise of this scale, even a single voter cannot disappear into the statistics. The responsibility lies squarely with the Election Commission to ensure that no citizen is wrongly removed from the electoral rolls and deprived of the right to vote through a hurried and heavy handed revision process.

Instead what the ECI has already done is snatched away the Right to Vote from 27.9 million Indians without rigour or reason.

^[1] New 18 years plus voters, However ECI wanted those who were deleted in SIR Enumeration to apply on Form No. 6 and Supreme Court directed the Political Parties to activate their BLAs to help such electors who stood deleted

[2] https://www.elections.tn.gov.in/ASD_19122025.aspx

^[3] General electors notified post SIR in declaration of election

^[4] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2173316&reg=48&lang=2

[5] https://ceoodisha.nic.in/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Amendments-ER-Press-Points-.pdf

^[6] https://ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in/Downloads/News/Final%20Press%20Note%20CEO-PN-05-2026.pdf: in the declaration of elections vide release dated 15.03.2026 by ECI

[7] https://ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in/Downloads/News/Final%20Press%20Note%20CEO-PN-05-2026.pdf

[8] When this staggering number of 27. 10 lakh of Voters excluded under the vague/unexplained category of “logical discrepancy was pointed out to the Supreme Court, the SC inexplicably ruled that they could be denied their right to vote this election, 2026, and brought back in the next election if their case is found to be genuine!!

[9] https://x.com/ceoup/status/2042535765822050811?s=20

[10] https://newsonair.gov.in/eci-publishes-final-voter-list-for-special-revision-in-assam-extends-west-

^[11] https://newsonair.gov.in/election-commission-of-india-releases-final-electoral-roll-for-gujarat/

[12] https://x.com/PTI_News/status/2025184572451836070?s=20

^[13] https://cms.patrika.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/SIR-Final-Publication-Rajasthan.pdf

[14] https://x.com/airnewsalerts/status/2025924114599600147?s=20\

^[15] https://www.ceo.kerala.gov.in/uploads/sir-2026/draft-electorate-23-12-2025.pdf

^[16] https://www.ceo.kerala.gov.in/uploads/sir-2026/final_electorate_sir_2026.pdf

^[17] https://ceogoa.nic.in/PDF/SIR2026/press-note-Final-publication.pdf

[18] https://x.com/Andaman_Admin/status/2025442063752511792?s=20

[19] https://x.com/ceopuducherry/status/2022544949041074407?s=20

^[20] https://ceolakshadweep.gov.in/Users/download_pdf_press_notes/UHJlc3MgTm90ZS0gUHVibGljYXRpb24gb 2YgRHJhZnQgRWxlY3RvcmFsIFJvbGwgKDEpLnBkZg==

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The post Exclusive Investigation SIR: How many voters did the ECI actually disenfranchise? Why do final figures show inexplicable ‘additions’? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

But when sites are both protected monuments and continued religious spaces, questions of access, maintenance, and control between different governing bodies begin to surface. Who decides how these spaces are used? Who is responsible for their upkeep in practice? And what happens when regulation begins to reshape everyday practices of faith? This report examines these questions through a set of monuments that sit at the intersection of law, history, and lived experience—where protection does not always guarantee accessibility, and recognition does not always ensure care.

Paying to Pray: Firoz Shah Kotla Fort

The citadel of Firoz Shah Kotla Fort was built in the 14th century by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the third ruler of the Tughlaq dynasty. In 1354, he established the city of Firozabad along the Yamuna, with the Kotla serving as its grand citadel. At its centre lies the Jami Masjid—one of the largest mosques constructed during his reign.

The site today is a centrally protected monument under the Ancient Monuments & Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958, with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) responsible for its conservation and management. The Act, enacted to preserve monuments of national importance, also regulates how such spaces are accessed and used. Under its provisions—and subsequent amendments—strict controls govern activity around protected monuments.

​Construction is prohibited within 100 metres of a monument and regulated within a further 200 metres, with any intervention requiring permissions from designated authorities. The law also allows the ASI to control access to protected sites, including regulating which areas remain open to the public.

​Within this framework, the Jami Masjid at Firoz Shah Kotla continues to function as a place of worship, with prayers offered during Zuhr (noon), Asr (late noon), and Maghrib(evening). Yet, in recent years, access to this space has become a point of contention.

In 2022, the ASI introduced ticketed entry to the fort for all visitors, including those coming to offer namaz. The move, reportedly linked to restoration work and post-pandemic site management, has since altered how people interact with the space.

For many, this shift has had tangible consequences. Qamarjahan, a resident of Seelampur, said the number of visitors has declined. “The ticket costs 25 rupees. First you spend on travel, then you pay again here—how often can someone keep coming?” she said, adding that she was once a frequent visitor but has since stopped.

Thursdays, in particular, held a distinct significance at Firoz Shah Kotla. ​​​​

For decades, the site drew visitors not only for prayer but also for supplication tied to local belief systems. Many believe that the ruins- especially the structure housing the Ashokan pillar, locally referred to as the Minar-e-Zarin- are inhabited by djinns who could grant wishes. People write letters detailing their desires and tie them to the railings, often returning with food offerings if their wishes were fulfilled.

While this practice continues, several visitors say that the introduction of ticketing has reduced the scale and frequency of these gatherings.

At the same time, some visitors point to visible improvements. Chandramohan Joshi, who has been visiting the fort since childhood, said that the introduction of ticketing has improved cleanliness and upkeep.

“Ibadat ka ghar hai ye, jab hum pooja karne aarahe hai toh saaf kapde pehen rahe hai toh jagah bhi saaf rakhni chahiye. (It is a place of worship—if we come here in clean clothes, the space should also be kept clean) ” he said.

His observation also reflects a shift in the character of the site—from an open, informal space shaped by gatherings and offerings to a more regulated monument with controlled access.

However, Joshi also questioned the principle of charging for prayer. “One does not have to pay to enter a temple or a gurdwara. Those coming specifically for namaaz should be exempted from paying,” he added. ​​

The issue becomes more pronounced during Eid, when large congregational prayers have traditionally been held at the mosque for decades. Worshippers are required to purchase tickets even on these occasions. This year, Aaley Mohammed Iqbal intervened by purchasing tickets for worshippers, allowing them to enter without paying individually. He has since been vocal about the need for a long-term solution, with discussions being done with the ASI in the past.

“Namaaz has always been happening here; foreigners had to pay for the tickets, however, post COVID-19, the ASI started ticketing worshippers as well. People from all backgrounds come to pray here; it is not feasible for a person earning Rs. 200-300 per day to pitch out Rs. 25 each time he wants to pray”, he said, emphasising the need for a permanent solution.

​​​​​​The question of prayer at protected monuments remains governed by ASI regulations. According to officials, permission for religious activity is often determined by whether continuous worship at a site can be historically established. In practice, only three mosques, Neeli Mosque, Palam Mosque and Sunehri Mosque, are formally recognised for offering prayers. ​​​​​​​​

An RTI filed by Sheikh Sartaj Ahmed Masoodi, president of the Muslim Welfare Organisation, Delhi, has raised further questions about how these rules are applied. The response indicated that while the ASI is responsible for maintenance and protection, it does not uniformly permit prayers across all protected mosques, pointing to inconsistencies in decision-making. ​The response also mentioned that permission for religious activity is determined by whether continuous worship at a site can be historically established. Three mosques, Neeli, Palam and Sunehri Mosque, are recognised for offering prayers.

Heritage sites that continue to function as active places of worship present a unique challenge, according to historian and author Swapna Liddle. “If a site remains active, people require amenities like running water, electricity and other facilities, which may not always be in keeping with the heritage character of a 14th-century monument,” she said. Liddle added that this tension is one reason why the ASI is often reluctant to allow monuments that are no longer in religious use to become active worship spaces again.

​At Firoz Shah Kotla, where history, faith, and long-standing practices intersect, the introduction of ticketing has not only affected access to prayer but also reshaped how the space is used. What was once an open site of regular gathering—religious and otherwise— now operates within a more tightly regulated framework, raising questions about who such spaces are ultimately meant for.

Caught Between Authorities: Sunehri Masjid

Tucked away in a corner of the parking complex of the Red Fort stands the Sunehri Masjid—easy to miss, yet still in active use. Built in 1751 A.D. by Qudsia Begum, the mosque is distinguished by its three domes and flanking minarets, a modest but enduring remnant of late Mughal architecture.

Today, the mosque exists in a state of administrative overlap. It is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India and was among the 123 sites in Delhi previously registered as waqf properties that came under scrutiny during the Waqf Amendment Act. Following the Supreme Court’s refusal to stay the amendment, such claims stand void for protected monuments, placing the mosque firmly under ASI’s jurisdiction.

Despite this, it continues to function as a place of worship for local residents and visitors.​

This arrangement is shaped by laws governing protected monuments. Under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (AMASR) 1958, amended in 2010, construction is prohibited within 100 metres of a monument and regulated in the surrounding 200-metre zone, with oversight by the National Monuments Authority.

On the ground, however, these protections do not always translate into adequate facilities. Dr. Mohammed Irshad, who has been visiting the mosque for over two decades, described the challenges faced by worshippers. “There is no proper shade,” he said, pointing out that rain often disrupts prayers, while the lack of cover makes it difficult to gather during extreme summers. The ablution (wudhu) area, he added, is too small—only able to accommodate around 50 people, despite Friday footfall reaching nearly 500. Uneven flooring and broken tiles further make it difficult to perform sajda (prostration).

An official at the site, who requested anonymity, said that while the ASI oversees the monument, routine maintenance often depends on contributions from worshippers. “The roof leakage was fixed by ASI,” he noted, “but other issues like the wudhu area and flooring remain unaddressed.”

Another long-time staff member at the mosque said that restoration work on the roof, stairs, and boundary structures was carried out roughly a year and a half ago. Plans to repair the flooring and gate were also reportedly approved but have yet to be implemented due to budgetary constraints. He added that ASI officials, including engineers and conservation officers, visit the site regularly—particularly on Fridays—given its proximity to the Red Fort.

Despite these visits, basic infrastructure remains inadequate. A single, non-functional washroom and damaged flooring continue to inconvenience worshippers, particularly during peak prayer times.

The Sunehri Masjid thus reflects a larger pattern: while legally protected and actively used, it exists in a state of partial maintenance. Its dual identity—as both a monument and a living place of worship—places it in a grey zone, where responsibility is defined, but not always fully realised.

Heritage sites that continue to function as active places of worship present a unique challenge, according to historian and author Swapna Liddle. “If a site remains active, people require amenities like running water, electricity and other facilities, which may not always be in keeping with the heritage character of a 14th-century monument,” she said. Liddle added that this tension is one reason why the ASI is often reluctant to allow monuments that are no longer in religious use to become active worship spaces again.
ASI officials declined to comment on the status of conservation of the mosque.

Protected yet Abandoned: Begumpur and Khirki Masjid

A Monument Left Behind

Nestled within the narrow lanes of Begumpur in South-East Delhi’S Malviya Nagar lies the Begumpur Masjid, an Archaeological survey of India (ASI) protected monument dating back to the 14th-century Tughlaq period. Once a central place of worship—and believed to have served as the Jama Masjid of Jahanpanah, the fourth city of Delhi—it now stands in a state of prolonged neglect, with sections of its domed structure lying in ruins.

According to available archival references, the mosque was declared a monument of national importance in 1920. More recently, in 2017, the then Minister of State for Culture, Mahesh Sharma, reiterated its status in the Rajya Sabha under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958. However, on the ground, these designations appear to have had limited impact on its condition.

A visit to the site reveals a structure marked by visible decay. While traces of restoration work can be seen, large sections remain damaged. The roofs on three sides of the mosque have partially collapsed, several pillars show signs of weakening, and the plaster has deteriorated. The ceiling appears darkened and patchy, indicating prolonged exposure and lack of maintenance.​​ As per a report in The Hindustan Times.

The central courtyard—vast in scale—is littered with cigarette butts, plastic waste, broken glass, and debris. Weed has grown through cracks in the flooring, making parts of the space difficult to access. On the northern side of the mosque, groups of men gather, often using the structure as a secluded spot to smoke and drink. Discarded liquor bottles and other remnants of such activity are visible across the site.

​Vikram Guleria, a resident who lives across the mosque, alleged that the space is frequently misused. “The site is not maintained properly. People come here to drink and take drugs. The authorities don’t object,” he said.

Another local, Mohanlal, 78, who runs a business in the area, said that the site is not safe enough for women to go alone and advised visiting it in groups. “A lot of people, especially tourists, come to explore the mosque, but I have lived here for a long time, so I know that it is not safe to go alone inside. I always tell new people to explore in groups,” he said.

Swapna Liddle, an Indian historian and author, said, “Begumpur Masjid is more like a 14th-century ruin, and it should be preserved as a ruin. The best thing that can be done is to invite and encourage people to visit there. I do not think the ASI does anything like that.” On the northern side of the mosque, groups of men gather, often using the structure as a secluded spot to smoke and drink. Discarded liquor bottles and other remnants are visible across the site.

On whether sites like Begumpur Masjid or Khirki Masjid could be better maintained if they were repaired and people visited or offered prayers there, Liddle says, “In places that are in active use for prayers, issues of management often arise. If people start using Begumpur Masjid for prayers, they will have to transform the place to add basic amenities or paint the structure. This was not there in the 14th century, so the question of preserving the heritage character became an issue for the ASI.”

​An official from the Archaeological Survey of India declined to comment on the condition of the mosque and conservation efforts being made there. Security personnel present at the site said that while warnings are issued against such activities, enforcement remains difficult. “We are often alone here, and most of the people are locals. There have been instances where we are threatened,” the official said.

​​​​​​​​The locality surrounding the mosque has also changed significantly over time. The area is densely built, with houses constructed close to the monument, leading to encroachment around the site. Over the years, surrounding developments have raised ground levels, leaving the mosque in a relatively low-lying position. Ongoing road construction in the area has further altered access to the site.

Built as a grand congregational space, it now stands largely overlooked—protected in law, but neglected in practice.

Like Khairul Manazil, its entrance is from the eastern side, opening into a large courtyard aligned with the western prayer wall. The western façade features a prominent central arched alcove, flanked by smaller ones. These recessed, shadowed spaces now provide cover and privacy, often facilitating misuse.

The Crumbling State of Khirki Mosque

​Tucked within the narrow, crowded lanes of South Delhi’s Khirki village, the Khirki Masjid rises unexpectedly—it’s heavy stone walls and shadowed arches giving it the appearance of a fortress more than a mosque. For many who live around it, that is exactly what it is: not a place of worship, but a neighbourhood fort.

Built between 1351 and 1354 by Khan-i-Jahan Junan Shah, the prime minister of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the mosque is a striking example of Tughlaq architecture. Its name—Khirki, derived from the Urdu word for “window”—comes from the distinctive perforated openings that once allowed light and air to filter into its enclosed structure. Today, it stands as a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958, with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) responsible for its upkeep. Reported The Wire.

On the ground, however, the experience of the monument tells a different story. Years of neglect have left visible marks—crumbling domes, broken pillars, and decaying stone surfaces. Residents also point to a persistent bat infestation that has, over time, altered both the physical condition and usability of the space.

Rameshwar Prasad, a tea vendor who has lived near the mosque for over three decades, described the conditions inside. “Cleanliness is a major concern. There are a lot of bats and a constant foul smell,” he said, adding that parts of the monument also get flooded during the rainy season.

Despite being classified as a Grade ‘A’ monument by the conservation body, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage for its historical and archaeological significance, Khirki Masjid remains largely disconnected from the community around it. Many residents say they have never stepped inside. As per a report in The Times of India.

Yogesh Singh, who has lived in the area for 27 years, said the condition of the monument keeps people away. “Many of us haven’t even gone inside. The insects and the smell from the bats make it difficult,” he said.

The mosque’s current state also reflects a shift in how it is used. Once a functional religious space, it no longer sees regular prayer. Personnel at the site, requesting anonymity, said visitors now come primarily as tourists. “People don’t come here to pray anymore. I usually accompany visitors because there are bats in the darker corners,” he said, adding that some maintenance work is underway.

For others, the issue is not just neglect, but safety. A domestic worker living nearby, requesting anonymity, said the place, at times, is used by drunkards and drug users. “I avoid coming here, especially at night. It doesn’t feel safe,” she said.

According to an ASI official, the bat infestation itself has contributed to the monument’s deterioration. “Bat droppings are harmful as they cause corrosion to the pillars,” she said on the condition of anonymity. The ASI official added that the conservation work has been initiated at the site in response to concerns raised by residents and historians.

​​Yet, for now, Khirki Masjid stands in an uneasy state protected on paper, but struggling in practice.

Historian Swapna Liddle said, “When the ASI acquired the Khirki mosque in the early twentieth century and removed the villagers, they designated it a protected monument rather than a place of worship. The continuity as a place of worship had already been broken for centuries, so worship was not resumed. The case of Begumpur and the case of Khirki are pretty identical in that way.”

The Legal gray zone

Worship, Heritage and Control Collide

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

At the centre of this dispute are 123 properties in Delhi that were claimed by the Waqf Board as Waqf properties, even as the Centre has maintained that these sites were acquired by the government between 1911 and 1914, with compensation paid and ownership transferred to the Government of India. These include mosques, dargahs and graveyards—several of them also protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.

​This overlap took on sharper legal meaning with the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025. Through Section 3D, the law states that any property already declared a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (AMASR) Act, 1958 cannot be treated as waqf property. In September 2025, the Supreme Court refused to stay this provision, while also recognising that protected-monument status does not automatically erase customary religious practices at such sites.

​A similar position has been reflected in earlier judicial decisions. In Zeeshan Ahmed Rizvi v. CEO Waqf (Burhanpur case), the Madhya Pradesh High Court held that a monument protected under earlier heritage laws could not subsequently be reclassified as waqf property. It noted that such monuments remain under government guardianship unless formally relinquished—placing state protection above retrospective waqf claims under Section 11 of the 1904 law.​

The scale of this overlap extends beyond Delhi. The ASI protects 3,679 monuments of national importance across India. Under Sections 20A and 20B of the AMASR Act, a 100-metre prohibited zone and a 200-metre regulated zone surround each monument, restricting construction and development. According to the Joint Committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, 254 protected monuments – nearly 7 per cent of the total—were listed as Waqf properties, including dozens in Delhi. The overlap between heritage protection and religious claims, therefore, is not incidental; it is structural.

​With the Supreme Court allowing Section 3D to stand, such monuments now fall clearly under the authority of the ASI and the Central Government for their maintenance and regulation. Yet, this legal clarity sits uneasily beside another national problem: disappearance and neglect. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2013 audit found that 92 centrally protected monuments were missing – around 6 per cent of those examined–a number it said was “far higher than the number communicated to Parliament by the ASI.” Later Press Information Bureau statements and government replies showed attempts to trace some of these missing sites, but the report exposed how fragile “protection” can be even on paper.​

At Firoz Shah Kotla Fort, this tension becomes visible at the point of entry.

​The Jami Masjid within the complex continues to host Friday prayers and Eid namaz, yet worshippers have been required to purchase tickets to access it. The legal basis for this lies in Section 18 of the AMASR Act, which allows public access to protected monuments “subject to rules,” including entry fees imposed by the ASI.

At the same time, the law explicitly protects religious practice. Section 5(6) of the AMASR Act states that “nothing… shall affect the use of any protected monument for customary religious observances.” Section 16(1) further specifies that a protected monument that is a place of worship “shall not be used for any purpose inconsistent with its character.”

​This creates a tension that extends into constitutional guarantees. Article 26 of the Indian Constitution grants religious denominations the right to manage their own affairs in matters of religion, including places of worship. Article 27 adds that no person can be compelled to pay taxes specifically for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion. Together, these provisions raise a difficult question: if prayer is protected, can access to that prayer be made conditional upon payment?

At Sunehri Masjid, the issue shifts from access to upkeep.

​Under Sections 16 and 19 of the AMASR Act, once a monument is declared protected and maintained by the Central Government, the responsibility for its preservation lies with the state. Section 19 is explicit: “The Central Government shall maintain every monument.”

Historian Swapna Liddle notes, however, that ASI’s approach to maintenance has historically not meant rebuilding monuments to look new. For years, she says, the organisation followed a policy of what conservation experts call “conserve as found” —preserving a monument in the condition in which it exists rather than reconstructing missing portions. “As you find the monument, you try to preserve it in that form,” she explains, “not to try and make it new.”

According to Liddle, this approach began to shift more visibly after restoration work around Humayun’s Tomb, where larger interventions became more common. She points to Khirki Masjid as an example, where a section that had collapsed centuries ago has reportedly been rebuilt by ASI This complicates the question of neglect. What may appear to worshippers as abandonment can sometimes reflect a deliberate conservation choice. However, for those using these spaces every day, broken flooring, unfinished roofing and inaccessible prayer areas remain practical barriers, regardless of conservation philosophy.

Yet the condition of the mosque suggests a gap between this obligation and its implementation, with worshippers continuing to navigate incomplete repairs and inadequate facilities. A similar pattern emerges at Begumpur Masjid and Khirki Masjid. Both are protected monuments, yet both show visible signs of neglect—ranging from structural damage to lack of upkeep and limited oversight. Protection exists in law, but not always in practice.

This gap between law and implementation is not new. In 2009, the Union government stated that prayers would be permitted only at a limited number of ASI-protected monuments where a “de facto status quo” already existed. The position resurfaced in 2023 before the Delhi High Court in the Mughal Masjid case near the Qutub complex, where the ASI argued against allowing prayers in protected monuments. Justice Prateek Jalan questioned that blanket stand and asked ASI to clarify its policy, observing that if the statute itself allowed continuation of prayers in a protected monument, that position would need to be respected. The court also sought old records relating to the site’s protected status, signalling that whether prayers could continue depended not on a universal ban, but on the monument’s legal history and prior use.

What emerges, then, is not a single conflict but a layered one. The Indian Express, reporting on the Martand Sun Temple controversy in 2022, noted the same distinction in ASI practice: worship is generally disallowed unless the site is a “living monument” where prayers were already being offered at the time protection was declared. In such cases, worship may continue, but ASI treats new or revived religious activity as a violation of conservation norms. The written law preserves customary worship. The authority managing the monument often treats conservation control as overriding unless continuity of prayer can be historically proven. The law says prayer survives protection; ASI’s working position often says protection limits prayer unless a narrow exception already exists.

​This ambiguity becomes sharper when viewed against the ASI’s own internal classification of monuments.

An RTI response accessed for this project lists “living” and “non-living” monuments under the ASI’s Delhi Circle. Only a small number of sites – including Firoz Shah Kotla’s Jami Masjid and Sunehri Masjid near Delhi Fort – are officially categorised as “living (prayer)” monuments where worship continues. The majority, including sites such as Begumpur Masjid and Khirki Masjid, are marked as “non-living”.

​The classification, however, does not find explicit mention in the AMASR Act. Nowhere does the law define a “living monument” or prescribe different legal standards based on such a distinction. Instead, the Act uniformly protects “customary religious observances” at any protected monument that functions as a place of worship.

​This creates a gap between law and administration. While the statute protects continuity of worship, ASI’s internal categorisation effectively determines where prayer is treated as legitimate and where it is not. In practice, this shifts the question from what the law allows to what the authority recognises. The RTI list further shows that several monuments currently marked as “non-living” were historically functional religious spaces, raising questions about how and when such classifications were made, and whether they can override the statutory protection of customary practice.

In effect, the distinction between “living” and “non-living” monuments – central to ASI’s operational policy – exists outside the text of the law, but shapes how the law is implemented on the ground.

​The law preserves prayer. Regulation governs access. Maintenance remains uneven. Between these, worshippers navigate a shifting reality – paying to enter a mosque, praying within partially restored structures, or standing in spaces that are legally protected but materially neglected.​

Delhi’s historic mosques are not only being debated in courts. They continue to be used, inhabited, and negotiated every day-existing somewhere between monument and mosque, where neither identity is fully resolved.

(The authors are freelance journalists and postgraduate journalism students at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia).

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The post Delhi: Between Protection & Prayer: Stories of revered sites now under the protection of ASI appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The findings emerge from The Elusive Search for Justice: 30 Year Review of the SCs & STs (PoA) Act, a 267-page report published in 2020 by the Human Rights Advocacy and Research Foundation (HRF), a Tamil Nadu-based human rights organisation that has extensively documented caste discrimination, atrocities, and the functioning of the PoA Act. The volume brings together contributions from a wide range of experts, including former civil servants, lawyers, academics, Dalit rights advocates, human rights defenders, and international observers working on caste discrimination and access to justice.

Among those contributing to the review are P.S. Krishnan, former Secretary to the Government of India and one of the country’s foremost authorities on Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe rights; Paul Divakar, Convenor of the Global Forum on Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent; Gerard Oonk, Ambassador of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) and former director of the India Committee of the Netherlands; Sandra Claassen, Director of Advocating Rights in South Asia (ARISA); senior advocates, grassroots activists, researchers, and organisations that have spent decades documenting caste-based discrimination and the implementation of protective legislation.

Published to mark three decades of the anti-atrocities law, the report is both a historical review and a contemporary assessment of the Act’s functioning. Drawing on government records, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics, court data, implementation reports, policy documents, and field-level experiences, it seeks to answer a fundamental question: why, despite one of the strongest legal frameworks against caste violence in the world, do Dalits and Adivasis continue to struggle for justice?

The answer offered by the report is stark. While Parliament has repeatedly strengthened the law through amendments, expanded victim protections, increased compensation, created monitoring mechanisms, and established special courts, implementation has lagged so dramatically that the law’s transformative potential has been severely undermined. According to the review, the crisis facing Dalits and Adivasis today is no longer primarily a legislative one. It is a crisis of enforcement, accountability, and institutional will.

Across its chapters, contributors describe a system marked by rising atrocities, low conviction rates, massive case pendency, poor investigations, dysfunctional monitoring mechanisms, delayed compensation, and widespread impunity for perpetrators. The report’s central contention is that while India has created an impressive legal architecture to combat caste violence, the institutions responsible for enforcing these protections have repeatedly failed those they were intended to protect.

Why the PoA Act was considered necessary

The report places the Act within the broader historical context of caste oppression and the limitations of earlier legal protections. Although the Constitution abolished untouchability through Article 17 and guaranteed equality before the law, violence and discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes continued largely unabated in the decades following independence. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, was intended to address practices of untouchability but proved incapable of tackling the growing incidence of organised violence, social boycotts, land-related attacks, sexual violence, economic coercion and collective punishment directed at Dalit and Adivasi communities.

The report notes that atrocities frequently occurred when members of historically marginalised communities sought to exercise rights formally guaranteed to them. Assertions of dignity, attempts to access public resources, educational advancement, economic mobility, political participation or resistance to exploitative labour arrangements often provoked violent backlash from dominant caste groups. Rather than being random criminal acts, such violence frequently functioned as a mechanism for maintaining entrenched social hierarchies.

It was this recognition—that caste violence was systemic rather than incidental—that ultimately led to the enactment of the PoA Act in 1989.

A stronger law, but not a safer reality

One of the report’s most significant findings is that the strengthening of legal protections has not been accompanied by a corresponding decline in atrocities. Over the years, the PoA Act has been repeatedly amended to address gaps in implementation and expand protections for victims. Amendments in 2015 and 2016 broadened the list of offences, strengthened victim and witness protections, increased compensation amounts, imposed stricter timelines for investigations, and expanded state obligations towards survivors. Further amendments in 2018 restored automatic registration of FIRs and removed procedural barriers to arrest that had been introduced through judicial interpretation.

Yet the report argues that these reforms have not translated into meaningful protection on the ground. Drawing on National Crime Records Bureau data, the review notes that registered atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes continued to rise throughout the decade. The report cites figures showing 44,946 cases in 2015, 48,679 in 2016, 51,712 in 2017, and 50,749 in 2018. Far from indicating a decline in caste violence, these figures suggest that atrocities remain widespread across the country. The authors caution that the real scale of violence is likely much larger because many incidents are never reported or formally registered.

The report rejects the argument that rising registration necessarily reflects greater awareness or improved reporting alone. Instead, contributors argue that persistent violence, combined with weak enforcement, continues to create conditions in which dominant caste perpetrators often act with confidence that punishment is unlikely.

The Central Problem: A justice system that rarely delivers justice

At the heart of the report lies a devastating critique of India’s criminal justice response to caste atrocities.

According to the review, the problem is not merely that atrocities continue to occur; it is that survivors rarely see justice even when they approach the legal system. The report points to chronically low conviction rates and massive case backlogs across the country. Referring to national data and official observations, the review notes that conviction rates in atrocity cases have remained alarmingly low while pendency rates have hovered around 80 percent. In practical terms, this means that a large proportion of cases either remain unresolved for years or end in acquittal.

Contributors argue that these outcomes cannot simply be attributed to false complaints, as is often alleged by critics of the Act. Instead, they identify a range of systemic factors that undermine prosecutions from the outset. These include delays in registering FIRs, improper invocation of PoA provisions, poorly conducted investigations, failure to collect evidence, hostile witnesses, intimidation of complainants, prosecutorial negligence, institutional bias within law enforcement agencies, and inadequate legal support for survivors. The cumulative effect is a justice system that frequently fails long before a case reaches trial.

The report warns that every acquittal secured through institutional failure reinforces a broader culture of impunity. When perpetrators repeatedly escape punishment, the deterrent value of the law erodes and confidence in legal remedies diminishes.

Tamil Nadu: A disturbing example of impunity

Among the most striking sections of the review is its detailed examination of Tamil Nadu’s implementation record. The report describes the state’s performance as a cautionary example of how strong laws can be rendered ineffective through administrative neglect.

According to the findings cited in the review, Tamil Nadu recorded an acquittal rate of 92.21 percent in cases under the PoA Act, substantially higher than the already troubling national acquittal rate of 74.3 percent. Approximately 94 percent of accused persons were acquitted. Even more alarming, the report notes that the State government did not file appeals against a single acquittal during 2015 and 2016.

The implications of these figures are profound. If acquittals are neither challenged nor reviewed, the report argues, the criminal justice system effectively communicates that caste-based crimes carry little risk of punishment.

The review identifies several additional implementation failures in Tamil Nadu:

• Less than 10 percent of survivors received compensation despite statutory entitlements.
• Only six of the thirty-two mandated Exclusive Special Courts had been established.
• Barely 55 percent of District Vigilance and Monitoring Committees were functioning.
• None of these committees conducted all mandatory meetings required under law.
• No action was taken against police officials accused of negligence despite explicit provisions enabling such accountability.

For the report’s authors, these failures demonstrate that the crisis lies not in the text of the law but in the state’s unwillingness to enforce it.

The Implementation Gap: India’s most persistent problem

Throughout the review, contributors repeatedly return to what they describe as India’s most enduring governance challenge—the gulf between legal promise and administrative reality.

The PoA Act creates a comprehensive framework for accountability. It mandates special courts, special public prosecutors, relief and rehabilitation measures, district-level monitoring bodies, state-level review mechanisms, time-bound investigations, and compensation schemes. Successive amendments have only expanded these protections.

Yet the report argues that many of these mechanisms exist only on paper. Monitoring committees frequently fail to meet. Compensation payments are delayed or denied. Investigations exceed statutory timelines. Exclusive courts remain unestablished in many districts. Police officers often fail to invoke relevant provisions. Survivors are left without meaningful support throughout the legal process. Several contributors describe this not merely as bureaucratic inefficiency but as evidence of deeper structural prejudice operating within state institutions. The report repeatedly suggests that caste bias continues to shape the functioning of the police, bureaucracy and judiciary, undermining implementation at every stage.

Untouchability has changed form, not disappeared

A particularly important intervention made by the report concerns the changing nature of caste discrimination in contemporary India. The review argues that while the PoA Act addresses many forms of physical violence and overt discrimination, large areas of everyday exclusion remain either inadequately addressed or entirely outside the law’s reach.

Contributors point to discrimination in access to public services, exclusion from marketplaces, discrimination in recruitment and employment, caste segregation in private institutions, barriers within educational institutions, workplace discrimination, and violence associated with inter-caste relationships. These forms of exclusion may not always manifest as spectacular acts of brutality, but they continue to shape the lives of Dalits and Adivasis in profound ways.

The report argues that while the legal framework has evolved from addressing untouchability to addressing atrocities, many contemporary manifestations of caste hierarchy remain insufficiently recognised within the legal system.

As a result, the review calls for a broader understanding of caste discrimination—one that moves beyond criminal incidents to include structural barriers affecting education, employment, housing, public participation and social mobility.

The Report’s Broader Argument: The crisis is structural

Perhaps the most important contribution of the review is its insistence that the crisis cannot be understood solely through the lens of criminal law.

Writing in the report, international human rights advocate Gerard Oonk argues that the struggle for justice must be viewed within a larger framework of caste hierarchy, economic inequality, social exclusion and institutional discrimination. According to him, expecting a single law—even a powerful one like the PoA Act—to transform social realities is unrealistic when the broader structures producing discrimination remain intact.

Oonk argues that what is missing is a shared societal commitment to dismantling caste-based inequality. He contends that meaningful progress requires equal access to education, healthcare, land, public resources, government institutions and the justice system itself. Without such structural changes, legal protections alone will remain insufficient.

The report repeatedly emphasises that caste discrimination intersects with class, gender, religion and economic vulnerability. Dalit women, Adivasi communities, informal workers and other marginalised groups often face multiple layers of exclusion that compound barriers to justice.

Thirty years later, the promise remains unfulfilled

The report ultimately presents a paradox. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act remains one of the strongest legal instruments enacted by the Indian state to protect historically oppressed communities. Over three decades, Parliament has expanded its scope, strengthened its enforcement mechanisms, increased relief measures, and responded to judicial attempts to dilute its protections.

Yet the report’s findings suggest that legal reform has consistently outpaced institutional commitment. Atrocities continue to rise. Conviction rates remain dismal. Compensation is frequently denied. Monitoring bodies are dysfunctional. Special courts remain absent in many areas. Officials rarely face consequences for negligence. Survivors continue to encounter barriers at every stage of the justice process.

For the authors of The Elusive Search for Justice, this is the central lesson of the last thirty years: India’s challenge is no longer simply creating laws against caste violence. The challenge is ensuring that those laws are implemented with the seriousness, urgency and political will necessary to make justice a reality rather than a promise.

Three decades after the PoA Act came into force, the report concludes, the struggle against caste violence remains not merely a legal battle but a test of the Indian state’s commitment to equality, dignity and constitutional justice itself.

The complete report may be read below:

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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.

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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:

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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

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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.