However, only time can answer whether this was merely a display of rivalry between the two competing power centres within the Congress government — Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar — or a sign of the emergence of a new one. Likewise, the criticisms made by the opposition BJP regarding the Congress government’s three-year rule carry neither genuine public concern nor sincerity.

All these are discussions and critiques driven by the ruling circles’ own power interests. They attempt to portray their class interests as public interest. Therefore, these mainstream discussions should not overshadow the real questions concerning the people — namely, whether the Congress government has brought real winds of change into the lives of the people of Karnataka in the past three years.

Should not this be the fundamental question?

In 2023, the people of Karnataka, who had been distressed by the continuous attacks carried out by the Bommai-led Sangh-affiliated BJP government against Muslims, Dalits, and the poor of this land, brought the Congress government to power with a clear majority. Compared to the BJP, Congress received 7% more votes (43%) and won 70 more seats (136 seats).

In its manifesto and budget speeches, the Congress party had promised to provide a genuine alternative to the BJP government. In particular, it assured communal harmony, punishment for divisive forces, social justice, welfare, guarantees, and people-oriented development.

Although politically aware sections and large parts of the public may not have had very high expectations regarding these promises, the disappointments and betrayals committed by the Siddaramaiah government over the past three years have exceeded expectations.

In fact, when the Siddaramaiah government completed two and a half years, several scholars under the leadership of a Bengaluru civic organization conducted a detailed study of the government’s budget promises and their implementation and released a comprehensive report. According to that report, even after half the government’s tenure had passed, only 6% of the budget promises had been fulfilled. The remaining 94% were categorised as promises that had either not yet begun, had begun but were limping along, or had still not been fully implemented. The report identified lack of resources, lack of political will, and administrative negligence as the primary reasons.

Recently, the Karnataka Muslim Federation also conducted an in-depth study on the promises made by the Congress government to the Muslim community during the last three years and the manner of their implementation, and released its report through a massive convention.

The report mainly exposed the immense political irresponsibility shown by the government in failing to curb Hindutva oppressive forces that continue targeting the Muslim community even after three years, in not repealing laws introduced by the BJP government specifically to harass Muslims, in failing to provide adequate representation to Muslims within the party and government, and in protecting the state from the SIR measures currently being implemented by the Modi government allegedly to further marginalise Muslims. The organisation also warned of massive resistance if time-bound solutions were not provided.

Read reports on this initiative here and here.

In addition, various farmers’, workers’, Dalit, student-youth, women’s, transgender, slum dwellers’, and minority organizations have individually and collectively criticised several policies implemented by the Congress government over the last three years through their struggles and protests.

Taken together, all these constitute a public review of the Congress government’s three years in power.

At a time when the Congress government is celebrating its third anniversary with self-deception and self-indulgence, these public reviews must be used to examine the government’s promises. In particular, there is a need to remind people of the disillusionments experienced over the past three years regarding communal harmony, social justice, welfare of the poor, and development.

Communal Harmony or Soft Hindutva?

As soon as the Congress came to power, it had promised to consider banning the Bajrang Dal. But immediately after assuming office, the respected Home Minister performed a ceremonial foot worship (Padapooja) of Pejawar Swamiji, regarded as a spiritual patron of the Bajrang Dal, at  his  residence and declared that there was no proposal to ban the organization. According to studies, such organisations have been responsible for 270 communal incidents over the last three years. Whenever public pressure increased, the government merely registered FIRs and washed its hands of the matter.

On the other hand, in support of the saffronisation of the Baba Budan Dargah — considered one of the root causes for the BJP’s rise in Karnataka — the Congress government also agreed to appoint Vedic priests at the dargah! The anti-cow slaughter law and anti-conversion law introduced by the BJP government have still not been repealed. Only after suffering setbacks in the Davanagere by-election and realising that Muslims were prepared to organise warning conventions against the Congress despite all pressure, did the government reluctantly withdraw the hijab order.

Furthermore, as the West Bengal elections have reportedly made clear, the Election Commission’s implementation of SIR under Modi’s direction is primarily aimed at denying citizenship rights to Muslims. SIR is set to begin in Karnataka from June. Yet even on this issue, the Congress government’s stance appears mute indirectly helping SIR. After repeated perusal by the civil society organisations and protest movement on the streets, the cabinet met recently and deliberated about the SIR problems. Even though a larger meeting of the leaders of the Congress party and Minsiters has been scheduled to discuss the way in which it could intervene, it has been clubbed with the agenda of discussing upcoming Greater Bangalore Authority (GBA) and other local body elections. The Government is not even thinking of approaching the SC pleading to postpone the Third Phase of SIR until it settles the question of Unconstitutionality of the SIR or the question ill-intentioned Logical Discrepancy or the SC;s own promise of looking into specific issues where the SIR deletions is more than the margin of victory, which has happened in at least 83 constituencies all favouring BJP!

Behind all this lies not a commitment to communal harmony, but rather “soft Hindutva” — the fear that taking a stand for truth and justice may invite accusations of being anti-Hindu and result in losing Hindu votes.

Thus, the Congress government is not defeating the BJP. Instead, by continuing the BJP’s policies, it is helping the BJP to further its agenda. The Congress government is implementing BJP-style policies to such an extent that people may begin to wonder whether they elected Congress or BJP to power.

Social Justice or Injustice?

The deliberate delay in implementing the internal reservation policy, along with the manner of its implementation that allegedly harms the most oppressed communities, both serve as evidence that the Siddaramaiah government is continuing social injustice in much the same way as the BJP.

In particular, nomadic communities categorized as extremely backward were grouped within “Group C” alongside socially advanced touchable castes among Scheduled Castes, and allocated only 4.5% reservation, resulting in severe injustice. Although the law passed with BJP support during the Belagavi session created an additional internal reservation within Group C — reserving the fifth of the first five positions for nomadic castes — it also provided that if eligible candidates from nomadic communities were unavailable, those positions could be filled by touchable Scheduled Castes, thereby creating yet another layer of injustice.

Additionally, in the response prepared for submission to the court, the government reportedly argued that nomadic communities are socially as advanced as Lambani-Bhovi groups and therefore were included in Group C — a position described here as deeply unjust.

Beyond this, there continues to be neglect regarding implementing the much-needed internal reservation within the ST community and increasing the existing 17% reservation for Dalits to 24% along with constitutional protection for the same.

Although the Congress manifesto promised that resources for the guarantee schemes would be generated through development and administrative efficiency, none of this was done. Instead, every year ₹12,000–14,000 crore is being diverted from the SCSP-TSP fund — which was meant to reduce welfare and development disparities affecting SC and ST communities and the wider society — thereby worsening social injustice.

The Kantharaj Commission report, which was specifically constituted to ensure social justice, was withdrawn under pressure from socially dominant groups. Likewise, the newly constituted Nayak report has allegedly been prevented from being published.

All this, according to the writer, proves that the Congress government too is continuing the BJP’s deceptive policies regarding social justice.

Congress Government – BJP Bulldozer?

The demolition of the huts of the economically marginalised in both Kogilu and Thanisandra was carried out by the Congress government’s bulldozer. Across the country, it is BJP bulldozers that are rendering lakhs of poor people homeless, but in Karnataka the Congress has taken up that contract. Is there then really any difference between the BJP and Congress in this regard?

The bulldozer has become a symbol of the oppressive and anti-poor development model followed in this country. BJP governments use bulldozers treating people as though they are not even citizens, then classify the displaced as Hindu or Muslim to carry out communal politics. That is social injustice — uncivilised and inhuman.

However, even the Siddaramaiah government, which makes claims commitment to social justice, is running bulldozers overnight and pushing poor slum dwellers onto the streets. Street vendors are displaced to make way for luxury malls. Though slums lack drinking water, tunnel roads costing ₹24,000 crore are being built for car users. Through the Greater Bengaluru Authority, a city for the privileged is being created. For this, thousands of acres of farmers’ land in Devanahalli, Anekal, and Bidadi are sought to be forcibly acquired.

Even though lands acquired from farmers in Devanahalli were reportedly returned after protests, several deceptive and corporate-friendly conditions were imposed so that farmers would not remain complete owners of their land.

What difference exists between Modi’s corporate-driven “Developed India,” which legalizes encroachments by builders occupying over 25,000 acres in Bengaluru while criminalizing the poor living in tin sheds and huts, and Siddaramaiah’s “Greater Bengaluru” project for builders — apart from chanting the mantra of social justice?

Likewise, just as the BJP-led central government uses the NEP bulldozer to close down the government schools serving poor children in the remote villages in the name of ensuring excellence in few centres,  the Congress government in Karnataka is using the KPS (Karnataka Public Schools) as a  bulldozer to close down all government primary schools in the vicinity of 5-6 kms to act as feeder to the KPS schools.

If depriving children in remote villages of even basic literacy through the BJP’s NEP is injustice, does the same act become justice when the Congress government follows the same policy in the name of KPS?

A Socialist Land Grab?

On one hand, the Congress government has continued the BJP’s practice of forcibly acquiring fertile agricultural land from farmers for corporate interests. On the other hand, like the BJP, it has remained deaf for over a decade to the demands of landless and homeless people in this state.

Yesterday in Tumakuru, ministers proudly spoke about providing e-Pauti and land survey (darakhastu podi) records to farmers across the state. It is true that those who already possess at least some documentation may benefit from this scheme. But the Siddaramaiah government has rejected 3.4 million applications submitted by poor peasants and agricultural workers — many of whom have survived through bonded labour and tenant farming since Independence — seeking legal rights over the lands they cultivate and sites to build homes.

Despite the Karnataka government owning 1.11 crore acres of land, it refuses the demand to enact a law that would guarantee even one acre of land to landless farmers. Additionally, the Congress government has still not repealed the corporate-friendly APMC Amendment Act introduced by the BJP government.

How, then, is all this any different from the BJP’s position of “land to the wealthy instead of land to the tiller”?

Dissent Mukt Karnataka?

There is little doubt that the Modi government at the Centre seeks not merely a Congress-free India, but an opposition-free India by suppressing dissent. Even though the BJP currently rules at the Centre, it uses UAPA laws originally introduced during the UPA regime to imprison or eliminate dissenters.

But how is the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka fundamentally different?

While the Congress government grants permission to Sangh Parivar groups to conduct hate speeches and marches in every neighbourhood, lane, and street of Bengaluru, it tells protesting farmers in Devanahalli — because the area falls under the Bengaluru Commissionerate — that they cannot protest there and must instead demonstrate only at Freedom Park in Bengaluru, 40 kilometers away.

Even though the Congress party itself has taken a stand against Israel’s attacks on Palestine, the government denies permission even for peaceful protests demanding “No War, We Want Peace.”

During the Naxal surrender process, the Siddaramaiah government assured surrendered Naxals and the civil society groups mediating the process that it was committed to granting them immediate bail and livelihood support, claiming that the Congress government was different from the BJP. But even after one and a half years following this surrender, not only has bail not been granted, even a single case trial has not begun, and all of them continue to languish in prison.

Meanwhile, it is reported that in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, BJP governments have reportedly not continued cases against surrendered Naxals. Most of those who surrendered there have either been released without charges or are out on bail.

Similarly, the Congress government has not conducted the necessary investigation into the alleged inhuman killing of unarmed Naxal leader Vikram Gowda, nor punished those responsible. In effect, the Karnataka Congress government too is assisting the BJP’s project of creating a “Naxal-free India.” Furthermore, it is cooperating in body, speech, and spirit with the BJP’s dream of turning India into an authoritarian nation free of dissent.

This does not mean that the BJP is better than the Congress. Certainly not.

The BJP is the Nations’ Menace.
The Congress is Indians’ disappointment.

The BJP is the problem.
The Congress has so far not been the solution but a continuation of the problem.

Even when Siddaramaiah is Chief Minister,
the Congress government softly continues the BJP’s capitalist and Brahminical policies.

The BJP implements the same policies more aggressively.

So, in summary:

Congress and BJP are not One and the same.
But…
the difference is too narrow to pin people’s hopes on.

Therefore, merely changing parties in power will not improve people’s lives.

The illusion that fascism can be defeated through the Congress will not succeed.

At the very least, the past three years of the Siddaramaiah government should dispel that illusion.

To realise the constitutional ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the country needs another freedom struggle.

Without that, there will be no escape from fascism.

Related:

Karnataka: Hindutva groups call for economic boycott of Muslim vendors at Siddheshwar Temple

In line with the approaching Karnataka polls, BJP MLA KS Eshwarappa gives anti-Muslim speech

Supreme Court takes action amid outrage following Karnataka Judge’s anti-Muslim and gender-insensitive comments in court

The post Three Years of the Congress Government appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The 242-page judgment delivered by the Division Bench of Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi goes far beyond a conventional determination of competing religious claims. The Court purportedly undertook an exhaustive examination of archaeological surveys, inscriptions, architectural remains, historical literature, colonial gazetteers, legislative history, constitutional principles, Hindu endowment law, Islamic waqf doctrine, and the jurisprudential framework evolved by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgment.

At the heart of the ruling lies the Court’s conclusion that the present structure standing at Bhojshala was constructed after the destruction and alteration of an earlier temple complex and that the continuity of Hindu worship at the site “has never been extinguished”.

The Bench ultimately quashed the 2003 arrangement framed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to the extent that it permitted Friday namaz while restricting Hindu worship inside the complex. At the same time, the Court attempted –not very convincingly–to balance competing religious claims by observing that the Muslim community may apply to the State for allotment of an alternative site in Dhar district for construction of a mosque.

The ruling is likely to have profound legal and political implications, not merely because of its conclusions regarding Bhojshala, but because of the constitutional and evidentiary methodology adopted by the Court — one that unmistakably draws from and expands the contentious principles articulated in the Supreme Court’s decision in Ayodhya Verdict.

Dismantling the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act

What is crucial for the citizen and legal mind to understand and assimilate is what the Courts are themselves doing to an existing law, the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act. Passed in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, this law that received resounding support of the legislature after it was tabled by the Narasimha Rao government (that incidentally also was in power when the illegal act of the demolition took place) is currently under constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court of India.

Ironically, the last time that the “challenge to this law” was heard by the apex court was in December 2024 when the matter was supposed to be heard after four weeks. While this has not happened, verdicts such as the Bhojshala verdict, again, seek to undermine this law. The Supreme Court’s December 12, 2024 order –albeit directed at trial courts—asked them to refrain from registering new suits and passing any effective orders (including survey orders), in cases challenging the religious character of places of worship pending the challenge to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991.

This order was passed by a bench, led by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and comprising Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and KV Viswanathan and the Judges had then emphasised emphasised that such proceedings violate the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991. This law prohibits altering the religious character of places of worship as they stood on August 15, 1947.

The Court’s intervention in December 2024, after years of pendency and delay (notice was issued on these petitions in 2021) came amidst a rising tide of petitions and suits challenging the status of religious sites, many of which are medieval mosques and shrines. At the time, a November 2024 survey order by a trial court regarding the 16th-century Sambhal Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh escalated communal tensions, culminating in violent clashes that claimed four lives in November. While the court had then stated that it would begin hearing the challenges to this law, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, this has not yet happened. Read on those developments here.

Context and broader implications of the PWA 1991

The 1991 Act was introduced to prevent the conversion of the religious character of places of worship, with an exception only for the Babri Masjid site, which was the subject of the Ayodhya dispute. The Act, which has been subject to increasing challenges, seeks to ensure that no new legal disputes are initiated over the status of religious places, especially those with historical significance, as of August 15, 1947.

Read this crucial reference on ‘When and How Ram Vilas Paswan made a strong pitch for the Places of Worship Act, 1991 here: A powerful leader from Bihar, unkindly known as the shrewd weatherman of Indian politics, Ram Vilas Paswan, then a member of the National Front, spoke powerfully from the Opposition benches, in support of the proposed law and scathingly of the BJP’s destructive politics of demolishing places of worship (Babri masjid, December 6, 1991) while not sparing the Congress either.

Read about the Babri Masjid demolition and also extensive analyses of the flaws in the Babri Masjid judgement here, here and here.

Even as we understand and analyse the flaws behind the ‘Bhojshala’ verdict –and there are several—it is crucial to also understand what the courts are themselves doing to this law. Across several states and sites, courts are reaching the same destination through different presumptions and conclusions. As a result, now the ‘Bhojshala Order’ just like several others that are being conclusively passed while the constitutional challenge to a vital law hangs in judicial limbo, effectively is doing to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, what neither parliament nor the Supreme Court has been willing to do. The Act is not being amended. It is not being struck down. It is being made rendered ineffective and inapplicable to those it was written to protect, one site at a time, through a different doctrinal route each time.

Incidently, the Bhojshala verdict delivered on Friday (May 15) by the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court is the latest expression of this pattern. It is also the most ambitious. The Bench comprised Justices Vijay Kumar Shukla and Alok Awasthi. It has held the 1991 Act inapplicable to Bhojshala. The ground is that the site is a centrally protected monument under a different statute. The route that this bench has introduced was not, until now, judicially available. This verdict now sets another precedent for those litigating sime verdict adds a sixth procedural pathway to a map that already had five.

As the Hindustan Times has reported, litigation similar to Bhojshala is now alive in courts from Uttar Pradesh through Karnataka. The geographic spread is itself the analytical fact. What follows is the spread, read against the Act it is dismantling.

Section 4 of the 1991 Places of Worship Act law says that the religious character of a holy site “shall continue to be the same as it existed” as it was on August 15, 1947, the day of independence. The only exception, under Section 5, said: “…nothing contained in this act shall apply to the place or place of worship commonly known as Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid situated in Ayodhya.”

However be it Gyan Vapi Mosque (Varanasi) or the or the suits related to the 13.37-acre land of Katra Keshav Dev Temple, seeking the removal of the 17th-century Shahi Idgah mosque, there are cases pending across courts that violate this law passed by Parliament. At least 18 suits for possession of land after removal of Shahi Idgah Masjid as well as for restoration of the temple and for permanent injunction are pending before the high court. The case was first heard on October 18, 2023 and the next hearing date is not available.

Apart from the Sambhal Shahi Masjid site in western UP, the site of the Idgah maidan dispute in Hubali, the Baba Boudhangiri syncretic shrine in Chikmagalur, Karnataka and the Malali Mosque in Malali village Mangaluru are already under similar litigation by far right Hindu organisations.

A dispute rooted in competing historical claims

The Bhojshala dispute –on which the MP HC pronounced its verdict on May 15–concerns an ASI-protected medieval structure in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, long claimed by multiple religious communities. While Hindu groups have since the early 1990s claiming that the structure has historically been regarded as Bhojshala — a temple of Goddess Saraswati and a renowned centre of Sanskrit learning established by Raja Bhoj, the celebrated Paramara ruler associated with scholarship, literature and temple patronage, the site has Mosque located there too..

The Muslim community, however, has been worshipping here at the Kamal Maula Mosque, claiming that the site functioned as a mosque for centuries and relying upon historical references from the Khilji period as well as a 1935 Ailan issued by the erstwhile Dhar State recognising it as a mosque.

A separate set of claims was raised by Jain petitioners, who argued that certain recovered idols and iconographic features suggested that the site was originally a Jain temple associated with Goddess Ambika or Jain Vidyadevi traditions.

The dispute had for years been governed by a 2003 administrative arrangement framed by the ASI under which Hindus performed puja on Tuesdays while Muslims offered namaz on Fridays.

The litigation intensified after petitions were filed seeking recognition of the site as a Hindu temple and restraining namaz within the complex. During the proceedings, the High Court ordered a scientific survey of the site by the ASI — an order that briefly reached the Supreme Court before the survey process was ultimately permitted to continue under judicial supervision. The resulting ASI report became the backbone of the High Court’s eventual conclusions.

The Court’s Central Finding: Bhojshala was a Saraswati Temple and centre of Sanskrit learning

The High Court concluded that the cumulative historical and archaeological material overwhelmingly established Bhojshala as a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati and a Sanskrit educational institution associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Bench recorded:

“We have noted the continuity of hindu worship at the site through regulated over time has never been extinguished. We record finding that historical literature placed established that the character of the disputed area was Bhojshala as a Centre of Sanskrit learning associated with Raja Bhoj of Parmar dynasty and the literature and architectural reference including those connected with the period of Raja Bhoj indicate the existence of temple dedicated to the goddess Saraswati at Dhar.” (Para 210)

Crucially, the Court clarified that it was not adjudicating a civil title dispute in the conventional sense. Unlike the Ayodhya litigation, which arose from suits concerning ownership and title over land, the Bhojshala matter, according to the Bench, primarily concerned determination of the “religious character” of the disputed structure through archaeological, historical and documentary evidence.

This distinction allowed the Court to focus extensively on patterns of worship, inscriptions, architectural continuity, historical references and archaeological findings rather than conventional proprietary claims.

The ASI Survey: The foundation of the judgment

The most decisive aspect of the ruling was the Court’s reliance on the scientific survey conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The Muslim parties had strongly challenged the fairness and methodology of the survey, raising objections regarding excavation practices, debris contamination, recovery of artefacts and interpretation of findings. The Court, however, categorically rejected allegations of bias or procedural impropriety.

The Bench noted that the survey had been carried out by a core technical team of senior archaeologists under the supervision of an Additional Director General of the ASI. It also recorded that officers belonging to the Muslim community participated in the process and that representatives of all contesting parties were present during videography and photography throughout the survey proceedings.

The Court held:

“We find that the survey was conducted by adopting scientific method in a fair and impartial manner. The presence of representatives of the petitioners and the respondent can be very well seen in the videography. The method which has been adopted by the experts was as per their expertise. The carbon dating method is used to determine the age of material itself and not for the age of construction period.” (Para 195)

Rejecting allegations regarding plastic waste and modern debris allegedly found at the site, the Court accepted the ASI’s explanation that such material was located only in upper heterogeneous debris layers containing modern dumped material, wrappers and conservation waste, and did not compromise the archaeological integrity of deeper strata.

The Bench further accepted the ASI’s clarification that carbon dating was not necessary because the purpose of the survey was not to determine the age of isolated organic material but to identify the architectural period and historical evolution of the structure itself.

Some facts about the History & structure

For 700 years, the Kamal Maula Mosque had been a place of worship for Dhar’s Muslims. Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, and the political ascendance of Hindutva majoritarianism, the efforts to twist and misrepresent archaeology and history both at Faizabad-Ayodya and elsewhere had begun. In fact, in May 2003, a year after the Gujarat pogrom, Communalism Combat, had published a detailed list –sourced from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)—of dozens of such “site on Hindutva’s hit list.” These may be read here.

Coming back to the Kamal Maula Mosque. History tells us that, in 1903, a British-era education officer named K.K. Lele while viewing a structure that locals called “Raja Bhoja ka Madrassa” decided to call it Bhojshala. Every British officer before him had called it a mosque. John Malcolm visited Dhar in 1822 and removed an inscribed panel from the structure. Of the building, he said only that it was a “ruined mosque.” William Kincaid, writing in 1888 about his years in Malwa, documented local legends about Raja Bhoja extensively and never once mentioned a Bhojshala. Then, in 2003, after the matter was contested in the courts, that is one hundred and twenty-three years later, the ASI submitted a 2,000-page report to the Madhya Pradesh High Court where this nuance around nomenclature was erased and only “Bhojshala Temple” appeared throughout. For locals, the structure that had stood in Dhar since 1304 CE is the Kamal Maula Mosque. Yet this history stands erased by this verdict of the MP High Court.

“Evidence of a pre-existing Temple structure”

The High Court repeatedly returned to one central conclusion drawn from the voluminous but flawed ASI report: that the existing structure was built upon and through the remains of an earlier temple complex dating to the Paramara period.

The Court observed that the remains of the earlier structure still survive beneath the present complex and that numerous inscriptions, sculptures and architectural fragments embedded within the existing structure clearly belonged to an earlier Hindu religious monument.

The judgment notes that hundreds of large and small inscription fragments were found in and around the structure, demonstrating that the site once possessed a substantially different architectural and religious identity.

The Court noted from the brief findings of the survey:

“Fragments of inscriptions, sculptures and architectural members suggest that superstructure of this stone structure was later modified and converted into mosque.” (Para 173)

The ASI findings also became central to the Court’s conclusion that the pillars and pilasters used in the present structure originally belonged to temples. There was no attempt by the Court to test the independence or autonomy of the ASI itself or seek expert autonomous opinion on the structure.

The Bench referred extensively to sculptural remains depicting:

• Ganesh,
• Brahma with consorts,
• Narasimha,
• Bhairava,
• divine and semi-divine figures,
• animal and human carvings,
• and temple motifs such as kirtimukhas.

According to the Court, many of these figures had been intentionally defaced, mutilated or chiselled out before reuse in the later structure.

The Court specifically noted that anthropomorphic depictions are generally inconsistent with mosque architecture and treated the mutilation itself as evidence that temple material had been repurposed during construction of the mosque structure.

The Bench also relied on the ASI’s observation that the present structure lacked architectural symmetry and appeared to have been assembled hurriedly from reused material of varying periods and styles.

The Paramara Dynasty, Raja Bhoj and the dating of the site

A substantial part of the judgment is devoted to dating the earlier structure to the 10th–11th centuries CE during the rule of the Paramara dynasty.

The Court relied upon:

• Paramara-era pottery,
• Indo-Sassanian coins,
• Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions,
• temple architectural remains,
• iron objects,
• mutilated Vishnu sculptures,
• and historical references associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Bench referred to the ASI’s finding that the earliest coins recovered from the site belonged to the Indo-Sassanian period, corresponding to the time when the Paramara kings ruled Malwa from Dhar.

One of the most important inscriptions discussed in the judgment contained two Prakrit poems consisting of 109 stanzas each associated with Raja Bhoj.

The Court noted that the inscriptions reportedly opened with invocations such as:

“Om Sarasvityanamah”

“Om Namah Shivay”

The Bench regarded this as significant evidence that the site possessed a deeply rooted Sanskritic and Hindu religious identity prior to later Islamic inscriptions. Importantly, the Court also observed that the Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions predated all Arabic and Persian inscriptions found at the site.

Bhojshala as a great centre of Sanskrit learning

The High Court accepted the argument that Bhojshala was not merely a temple, but a renowned educational institution associated with Sanskrit learning under Raja Bhoj.

The Court relied on several historical texts and administrative publications, including:

• the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908),
• publications of the Royal Asiatic Society,
• G. Yazdani’s Mandu: The City of Joy,
• archaeological reviews from 1972–73,
• and educational records from the Dhar State.

The Bench repeatedly referred to the famous “serpentine grammatical inscriptions” found at the site — Sanskrit grammatical formulae carved in serpent-shaped arrangements on floor slabs and architectural members.

These inscriptions became central to identifying the structure as “Bhojshala” or “Hall of Bhoja”. Historical literature cited before the Court described the structure as: “Raja Bhoja ka Madrassa” or Raja Bhoja’s School.

The Court treated these records as corroborative evidence establishing the site’s longstanding association with scholarship, Sanskrit education and Goddess Saraswati.

The Court’s Conclusion: The existing structure was built from Temple remains

The judgment repeatedly emphasises that the current structure reflects unmistakable evidence of reuse of temple material after demolition or dismantling of an earlier Hindu religious structure.

The ASI report, extensively reproduced in the judgment, stated that the structure appeared to have been assembled rapidly using material from an earlier building without regard for symmetry or consistency.

The Court pointed to:

• reused basalt pillars,
• temple-style columns,
• mutilated deity carvings,
• reused sculptural blocks,
• and fragmented inscriptional material embedded within the mosque structure.

According to the Court, the cumulative architectural evidence clearly established that temple components had been dismantled and incorporated into the later Islamic structure.

Why the Court rejected the Mosque claim

One of the most consequential portions of the judgment concerns the Court’s rejection of the claim that the disputed structure was originally and validly a mosque. The Muslim parties had relied on historical references from the Khilji period and the 1935 Ailan recognising the structure as a mosque.

The Court, however, concluded that none of the historical material produced by the Muslim side established that the structure existed as a mosque prior to the already established 1034 AD Hindu religious structure. More significantly, the Bench held that there was no evidence establishing the site as valid waqf property.

The Court undertook a detailed discussion of Islamic waqf doctrine, referring to Sir Dinshaw Mulla’s Principles of Mahomedan Law. It observed that a valid waqf requires:

• ownership by the waqif,
• dedication of the property to Almighty God,
• and extinction of the waqif’s ownership.

The Bench held that no evidence showed that the disputed land had ever been dedicated as waqf property.

It observed:

“No material suggests that the part of the land No.604 (Old No.313) is a Waqf property and the same was dedicated or could be dedicated to Waqf. It is imperative under Muhammadan Law that property must belong to waqif and the owner must belong to waqif and the owner must dedicate the property to the Almighty. Historical material placed before us could not show that waqf has been created and therefore, there can be no presumption regarding existence of a mosque in the disputed area which is prima facie established to be constructed as Bhojshala and temple of goddess Vagdevi (Saraswati) a place of learning Sanskrit language in 1034 AD.” (Para 192)

The Court further reasoned that land already vested in a Hindu deity could not validly become waqf property.

The 1935 Ailan declared constitutionally unsustainable

The Court also rejected reliance on the 1935 Ailan issued by the ruler of Dhar State recognising the site as a mosque. The Bench held that the order could not automatically survive after the Constitution came into force.

Invoking Articles 13 and 372 of the Constitution, the Court observed that pre-Constitution executive orders remain operative only if they conform to constitutional principles. According to the Court, the Ailan was inconsistent with the overwhelming archaeological and historical evidence establishing the site’s Hindu religious and educational character.

The Court further held that because the site had already been notified as a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904, the Dhar ruler lacked authority to alter its essential legal status in 1935.

The Jain claims and the British museum idol

The judgment devotes considerable attention to claims raised by Jain petitioners who argued that certain idols and iconographic features established the site as a Jain temple. Particular emphasis was placed on an idol presently located in the British Museum and identified by some petitioners as Ambika, a Jain goddess. The Court, however, rejected the argument that the disputed structure was a Jain temple.

The Bench held that no historical literature, ASI findings or architectural material supported the conclusion that the site functioned as an exclusively Jain religious structure.

It observed:

“Whether the idol is of Saraswati or of Ambika would not render much assistance to his submission that the disputed area was a Jain temple as we held that no material has been placed before us either by way of historical literature, architectural features or in ASI survey suggesting that the disputed area was a Jain temple.” (Para 209)

The Court noted that Saraswati is worshipped in both Hindu and Jain traditions as a deity associated with learning and wisdom.

The Bench also referred to iconographic features such as books held by the deity, accompanying figures and seated ascetic forms.

In one of the most controversial observations in the judgment, the Court stated that Jainism and Hinduism evolved alongside each other and referred to statutory provisions under the Hindu Marriage Act and Hindu Succession Act to note that Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs are treated within broader Hindu legal frameworks for certain civil purposes.

The Court therefore concluded that the presence of Jain-associated iconography did not alter the essential Hindu character of the site.

The Saraswati Idol and the possibility of repatriation

The High Court also considered requests seeking the return of the Saraswati idol presently believed to be housed in the British Museum.

The Bench noted that representations had already been submitted to the Union Government seeking repatriation of the idol and observed that the Government of India may consider taking steps to bring the idol back and reinstall it within the Bhojshala complex.

The Court referred to inscriptions associated with the idol mentioning Vararuci, an official in the Paramara kingdom, who had commissioned images of Vagdevi and Ambika.

How the High Court imported the Ayodhya framework into Bhojshala

Perhaps the most legally significant feature of the judgment is its explicit adoption of principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya verdict. The High Court treated the Ayodhya decision not merely as persuasive precedent, but as a foundational jurisprudential framework for resolving historical-religious disputes.

The Court identified several governing principles:

• disputes over ancient religious sites must be decided on the civil standard of “preponderance of probabilities” rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt;
• courts must focus on continuity of worship, patterns of religious use and historical belief;
• destruction or removal of idols does not extinguish the underlying religious endowment;
• ASI reports deserve substantial evidentiary weight because they are prepared by technical experts;
• and archaeological remains, inscriptions and religious motifs possess strong probative value in determining the historical religious character of a site.

The Court also emphasised that faith cannot always be tested through rigid secular logic or documentary proof and that longstanding continuity of belief deserves legal recognition where corroborated by historical circumstances.

Final directions of the court

The High Court ultimately:

• declared the religious character of the disputed site to be Bhojshala, a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati;
• recognised the site as a Sanskrit learning centre associated with Raja Bhoj;
• quashed the 2003 ASI arrangement permitting namaz at the site;
• directed the Union Government and the ASI to formulate arrangements for administration and management of the temple and Sanskrit learning centre;
• clarified that the ASI would continue exercising overall statutory control over the protected monument;
• and observed that the Muslim community may apply for allotment of alternative land for construction of a mosque in Dhar district.

The Bench further stated:

“Every Government has the constitutional obligation to ensure preservation and protection of not only the ancient monuments and structures including temples of archaeological and historical importance, but also of sanctum sanctorum as well as the deity of spiritual importance. There is a constitutional duty even to sanction funds for providing basic amenities to pilgrims, proper arrangements for shelter places, maintenance of law and order and the preservation of purity and pristine character of the deity. We have noted the continuity of hindu worship at the site through regulated over time has never been extinguished. We record finding that historical literature placed established that the character of the disputed area was Bhojshala as a Centre of Sanskrit learning associated with Raja Bhoj of Parmar dynasty and the literature and architectural reference including those connected with the period of Raja Bhoj indicate the existence of temple dedicated to the goddess Saraswati at Dhar.” (Para 210)

Why the judgment will matter far beyond Bhojshala

The Bhojshala judgment is likely to become one of the most consequential religious-site rulings in India after the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict, not merely, because of what it decided, but because of the legal framework, it normalises and expands. The judgment represents a significant moment in the evolution of Indian constitutional jurisprudence on contested religious spaces, where courts are increasingly being called upon to adjudicate centuries-old historical, theological and civilisational disputes through the language of archaeology, faith, continuity of worship and constitutional law.

At the heart of the ruling lies a judicial methodology that goes far beyond the facts of Bhojshala itself. The High Court explicitly imported and applied core principles from the Ayodhya judgment — particularly the reliance on “preponderance of probabilities”, continuity of worship, archaeological interpretation, and the survival of religious endowments despite destruction of structures or idols. In doing so, the Court has effectively reinforced and expanded a legal template through which competing historical claims over religious sites may increasingly be litigated and judicially resolved.

The judgment is particularly significant because it elevates archaeological evidence to a position of extraordinary constitutional and evidentiary importance. The Court repeatedly treated the ASI report as a highly persuasive and technically authoritative document capable of determining not merely architectural history, but the religious character and historical evolution of the site itself. Although the Court formally acknowledged that expert reports are not conclusive, the structure of the judgment demonstrates that the ASI findings became the backbone of almost every major conclusion ultimately reached by the Bench.

This growing judicial centrality of archaeology is likely to have implications far beyond Bhojshala. The ruling strengthens the idea that excavation reports, inscriptions, iconography, architectural fragments and material remain can decisively shape constitutional adjudication concerning religious identity and historical memory. In practice, it signals a judiciary increasingly willing to reconstruct medieval histories through archaeological interpretation and then attach contemporary legal consequences to those reconstructions.

Equally significant is the Court’s treatment of continuity of worship. The Bench repeatedly emphasised that Hindu worship at the site had “never been extinguished”, even if regulated or interrupted over time. This formulation mirrors a crucial aspect of the Ayodhya framework: that religious continuity may survive political conquest, structural alteration or physical destruction. The judgment therefore deepens the doctrinal move away from viewing religious disputes purely as questions of title and possession, and toward a broader inquiry into historical faith, devotional memory and civilisational continuity.

The ruling may consequently influence future litigation concerning other disputed religious sites where arguments are framed around claims of interrupted worship, historical destruction or continuity of sacred identity despite architectural transformation.

At the same time, the judgment raises serious constitutional, factual and secularism-related concerns. The Court repeatedly entered deeply partisan and contested theological and historical terrain, particularly while discussing the relationship between Hinduism and Jainism. Its observation that Jainism is “a branch of Hinduism”, supported through references to personal law statutes such as the Hindu Marriage Act and Hindu Succession Act, is likely to invite substantial criticism from constitutional scholars, historians and members of the Jain community. Critics are likely to argue that civil statutory classification for limited legislative purposes cannot automatically determine independent religious identity or theological distinctiveness.

The judgment also raises larger concerns regarding the role of courts in resolving historical controversies that are often shaped by fragmentary evidence, competing interpretations and politically charged narratives. By relying heavily on bodies like the ASI that are neither independent nor autonomous, the kind of “literature, inscriptions and archaeological reconstruction” that the ASI has indulged in without the expertise of subject experts –that too, to determine the “religious character” of a centuries-old structure—is seriously questionable. The Court has moved the judiciary further into the terrain of subjective adjudication — an area where legal institutions may struggle with methodological and (absence of expertise) limitations.

Another critical aspect of the ruling is its treatment of waqf doctrine and mosque status. The Court concluded that no valid waqf existed because there was insufficient evidence showing dedication of the property by a lawful waqif. It further suggested that a mosque constructed upon a pre-existing Hindu religious structure could not acquire legitimacy in the absence of valid waqf dedication. This reasoning and subsequent conclusion is inherently problematic. Besides, it could have repercussions on future litigation involving mosque structures standing over sites claimed to have earlier religious histories.

Importantly, the judgment also reflects the continuing constitutional afterlife of the Ayodhya verdict. Ayodhya was initially presented by many as a singular and exceptional resolution to an unusually complex dispute. However, judgments such as Bhojshala indicate that the legal principles evolved in Ayodhya are now becoming part of a broader and expanding jurisprudential framework governing religious-site litigation across India.

The Bhojshala ruling therefore marks more than a adjudication of a long-running dispute in Dhar. It signals the consolidation of a new judicial approach in which courts are increasingly prepared to engage with questions of untested sacred geography and ‘historical grievance’ through constitutional adjudication. This kind of approach is unlikely to be healthy for a modern constitutional approach that is required to lean not on majoritarian contestation of historical fact –like in Faizabad-Ayodhya but on a sober evaluation of all aspects of such engendered conflicts.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Related:

Ayodhya, January 22: Growing influence of religion in state & society matter of disquiet say 65 former civil servants

Babri-Ayodhya verdict: Will appeal for peace apply to Hindutva hardliners in future?

Reading SC order on Ayodhya: Condemn the Sin but Concede to Sinners

Political dimensions of Ayodhya verdict

Ayodhya Verdict: Has Faith Prevailed Over Justice?

The post Bhojshala Judgment: MP High Court declares Dhar site a Saraswati Temple, ends Namaz rights at complex appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As this article is being written, the Supreme Court has taken suo moto cognizance of the media reports which brought to light the inhumane orders of the trial courts and a High Court order which ordered Dalit and Adivasi individuals, reportedly engaged in anti-mining protests, to clean police stations. The apex court also passed an order directing all courts across the State of Odisha to forthwith delete such or similar offending conditions from bail orders and to refrain from substituting them with any analogous requirements. The court also opined “Given these extenuating circumstances, we are of the considered view that no other State Judiciary also ought to be exposed to or replicate such caste-coloured and oppressive conditions, which have the potential to generate serious social friction.”

It is imperative that any discussion on environment, and analysis of jurisprudence, has to be done in the real material context. The material context here is that the power of the state and ruling establishment is brazen and unkind to the most vulnerable and downtrodden Indians. Such power, sometimes comes as grey hounds or sometimes comes in black robes. This contextual prism has to be used to view and understand the following discussion.

High Courts, in that sense, are not merely intermediate constitutional forums. They are where constitutional promises most frequently meet the citizen in distress. They hear, often as courts of first and last practical resort, disputes ranging from land, livelihood and liberty to forests, mining, displacement and police excess. Yet, despite carrying this enormous constitutional burden, their environmental jurisprudence rarely receives the sustained attention given to the Supreme Court. The volume and variety of cases before the High Courts make them a crucial site for studying how environmental law actually operates: what language judges use, who’s suffering is made visible, whose claims are treated with suspicion, and how courts balance ecological protection against notions of ‘development’, ‘state power and private capital’. It is with this lens that the following discussion turns to recent High Court decisions.

Some context is necessary before turning to the High Courts.

In Vanashakti v. Union of India (decided May 16, 2025),[1] a Bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan struck down the Ministry of Environment’s 2017 notification and 2021 office memorandum (OM), both of which permitted ex post facto environmental clearances — that is, regularisation of projects that had commenced operations without first obtaining the clearance the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 requires.[2] The judgment held that the notification and OM were contrary to the precautionary principle and that the Ministry could not, by executive instrument, undo what the statute mandated.

A review petition followed. In November 2025, a three-judge Bench took up the review and split.[3] The majority, in an opinion by the Chief Justice with Justice K. Vinod Chandran concurring separately, recalled the original directions and read the law as permitting ex post facto regularisation in suitable cases. Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, who had been on the original Bench, dissented. He called the majority’s approach “a step in retrogression,” and his point was simple and well made — the precautionary principle is the cornerstone; polluter pays is reparation. You cannot swap them around and call it balance. Justice Chandran, in his concurrence, pointed to earlier decisions in Common Cause, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, and Electrosteel,[4] where the Court had let projects stand despite clearance irregularities, subject to conditions. The original Vanashakti judgment, he argued, had missed these precedents, and the cost of enforcing it strictly would be enormous.

This difference between the judges at the Supreme Court, and the support one would find for both the arguments, is actually a mirror of how the polity has come to view environment and environment law. Whether ecological protection is a non-negotiable constitutional imperative that must be satisfied before economic activity proceeds, or whether it is one consideration among several, adjustable after the fact through compensatory mechanisms. And the fact that the Supreme Court itself is divided on this makes it worth asking a more granular question: what is happening in the High Courts below?

This article is the first in a three-part series examining how High Courts across different regions of India are contributing to, or departing from, the trajectory of environmental jurisprudence. This part looks at Central India: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand. A region that is home to some of the country’s richest forests, its most significant mineral reserves, and its most vulnerable tribal populations.

This exercise is not being taken up with a premade assumption that the judiciary is doing a very bad job at protecting environment or interpreting the environment protection law. It is actually made with the contra assumption that the High Courts are being proactive, but it is made with a probing eye to see if there are any deviations, and if so, what do they reveal.

Parts II and III will extend this inquiry to Northern and Western India.

The Baseline

It is unfair to the judiciary and to this exercise to begin with all the environment-protection-dilution jurisprudence and rain only criticism on them. After all, the High Courts have consistently, albeit with exceptions, shown their inclination to protect the environment for the last few decades. It is only fair to begin with where they have held firm.

The Good Days

Madhya Pradesh

Vivek Kumar Sharma v. State of Madhya Pradesh[5] is a good place to start because it shows what the system looks like when it works properly. The MP High Court struck down a 2015 State notification that had exempted sixty-two tree species from the Forest’s Act thus facilitating their transit. The State’s case was that the exemption promoted agroforestry on private lands and had the backing of the Ministry of Environment. The state essentially meant that because those tree species now could be transported without much compliance, private persons will likely grow those trees. The court went and looked at what had actually happened on the ground. No study had been conducted on whether these species also grew in forests. Why would it matter? If these trees did grow in forests, timber mafia would cut down the trees and transport them without any fear of the Forest’s Act’s regulatory quagmire. The State’s own Chief Conservator of Forests, Indore Circle, had reported that the exemption was playing havoc with lush green trees in both forest and non-forest areas. Senior forest officials had flagged that the timber mafia was using the exemption to legitimise illegally procured wood. The court found all this in departmental correspondence that was already on record. Nobody in the State government had acted on it.

The court applied M.K. Ranjitsinh’s precautionary principle,[6] struck down the notification as manifestly arbitrary under Article 14, and refused to entertain the delay objection, holding that environmental questions affecting every citizen’s life cannot be barred by limitation. And it noted, with visible frustration, that but for the PIL petitioners, the court would have been completely aloof of the ground reality. It means the entire regulatory apparatus of the State of Madhya Pradesh had failed to flag what a few public-spirited citizens could demonstrate through departmental correspondence that was already on record. The court stated as follows, observing the faulty manner in which the notifications were issued:

The arbitrary manner in which notifications came to be issued in quick succession from the year 2005 onwards points out clinchingly of the immense pressure of the timber mafia on the State authorities, with the environment and forest as its mute victims. The issuance of impugned notification mechanically, without studying and examining the fundamental aspect of impact of such exemptions on the existing forest cover of the State provokes the conscience of this Court, which has been compounded by dissatisfactory answers given by the State in the present proceedings.

(See ¶ 104.)[7]

On precautionary principle too, the MP High Court had substantial reiterations to be made. It termed the principle one of the “basic features of environmental jurisprudence.” The court stated as follows:

…(the principle) mandates that Courts must lean towards that interpretation of any statutory position, which furthers and advances the precautionary approach towards the environment, forests, and natural resources. Whilst doing so, the Court must be mindful that the State cannot treat the environment, natural resources and forests, as part of its sovereign wealth under its commercial use, rather all these resources are held as a trustee on behalf of the general public.

In a similar vein, the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Indore Bench took suo moto cognisance in late 2025 based on a newspaper report that 5,961 industries in the State were operating without valid permission from the M.P. Pollution Control Board.[8] The court issued notices to the Chief Secretary, the Principal Secretary for Housing and Environment, and the Pollution Control Board. The court’s willingness to act on a newspaper report, to hold the executive accountable for systemic regulatory failure, represents environmental activism of a substantive kind.

Chhattisgarh

The Chhattisgarh High Court has displayed the same instinct: in In Re: Karkhano Ke Avshesh Aag Ke Havale (21 March 2024), the Bilaspur Bench, in a suo moto PIL prompted by a Navbharat report on the burning of industrial waste behind the Sirgitti police station, summoned the State machinery to demonstrate compliance with the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016, and the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and ultimately had the District Magistrate convene meetings of regulators and industrial units to translate the Rules into operational practice.[9]

 Jharkhand

Jharkhand provides the fullest contemporary picture of this baseline activism. Three judgments delivered in 2026 by a Division Bench of Chief Justice M.S. Sonak and Justice Rajesh Shankar deserve particular attention.

The first, Jharkhand Human Rights Conference v. State of Jharkhand, decided on February 26 , 2026,[10] closed a Public Interest Litigation that had been pending since 2012 on the management of bio-medical waste. The Court’s narrative of those fourteen years is instructive starting from a 2012 record of “serious deficiencies” in Ranchi, Dhanbad and Jamshedpur; a 2013 finding that the State did not have basic consolidated data on healthcare institutions generating bio-medical waste; photographic evidence of sharps and microbiological material dumped on public roads; state-wide expansion of the proceedings through the State and District Legal Services Authorities; sustained dissatisfaction through 2014 and 2015; supervision of Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment Facilities at Lohardaga, Ramgarh and Adityapur; and a suo moto intervention at RIMS, Ranchi, in 2024. The Bench recorded that by the time it closed the proceedings, Jharkhand had moved from a single functional treatment facility to six operational CBWTFs, with a seventh under construction.[11] The Court did not, however, make it look like that this was its own work. It explicitly framed the case as one in which “sustained judicial oversight has contributed to a more responsive and coordinated regulatory framework,” cautioned that “constitutional courts cannot assume the role of a continuing administrator where a statutory mechanism is already in place,” and issued a careful set of nineteen coordination-and-enforcement directions that operationalise the 2016 Rules without supplanting them.

The second, Court on Its Own Motion v. State of Jharkhand (February 16 , 2026),[12] arises from a national highway alignment that had been proposed to cut through the Core Zone of a wildlife sanctuary and an Eco-Sensitive Zone. After repeated dissatisfaction with the pace of the NHAI and the State, the Bench directed for a fresh proposal for an alternative alignment passing through plain and rolling terrain and not through the Core Zone or ESZ, and pressed the State to file an animal-passage plan. The order is short and unremarkable in its own terms; what is remarkable is the assumption running through it, that an executive statement about wildlife corridors made in court must mean what it says, and that two years of non-compliance with such a statement is not an acceptable place for the proceedings to rest.

The third, Anand Kumar v. State of Jharkhand (April 16, 2026),[13] was a PIL by a retired Range Forest Officer challenging two notifications of the Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board that had reduced the minimum distance for stone mining and stone crushers from forest and forest-land boundaries from 500 metres to 250 metres. The State produced a 2015 “Expert Committee” NOC, but the Court read it carefully. Of the five members of the committee, only one was an environmental engineer; the rest were bureaucrats from Mines and Industries Departments and a state industrial agency. The NOC, on its face, did nothing more than refer to siting norms in other States — Orissa, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar — and on that basis proposed a 50 percent reduction in the buffer zone for Jharkhand. There was no comparative analysis of forest density, topography, or ecological sensitivity. The Bench held that this was an exercise vitiated by non-application of mind and by exclusion of relevant considerations, that the precautionary principle “tilts the balance of convenience considerably towards imposing restrictions on the grant of consents within 500 metres of forests and forest lands,” and that the harm to the ecology is “often irreversible.” Until final disposal, the position prevailing before the impugned notifications stands restored: 500 metres for stone mining, 400 metres for stone crushers, and the one-kilometre eco-sensitive zone around national parks and wildlife sanctuaries laid down by the Supreme Court in T.N. Godavarman.[14] The Court’s reasoning is significant for two reasons. First, it draws openly on the precautionary principle of Ranjitsinh, treating it as decisive rather than ornamental. Second, it refuses to defer to the “Expert Committee” label without examining whether the committee was, in any meaningful sense, expert.

The fourth Jharkhand decision in this group, Hemant Kumar Shikarwar v. State of Jharkhand (May 7 , 2026),[15] extends the same approach to enforcement. The petition concerned illegal stone mining and non-compliant stone crusher units around the Siwane River in Hazaribagh district. Drawing on an independent report by the District Legal Services Authority, the Bench documented abandoned water-filled mining pits, damage to roughly a hundred hectares of cultivable land, and disruption of the river’s ecological balance. What is notable is the structural relief that follows. The Bench directs monthly District Level Task Force meetings, an exhaustive review of every Environmental Clearance, Consent to Establish, Consent to Operate, Explosive Licence and mineral-dealer registration in the area, suspension of mining operations until compliances are verified, the Hazaribagh Wildlife Sanctuary one-kilometre buffer, technology-driven enforcement through Wi-Fi-enabled CCTV and GPS tracking, criminal prosecution under §§ 21 and 22 of the MMDR Act, and the application of the polluter-pays principle to recover environmental compensation.[16] The polluter-pays principle is invoked, but it is invoked in its proper register — as a tool of reparation imposed on identified violators, not as a substitute for prevention.

It is worth pausing here on a different kind of Jharkhand case. In Jharkhand Int Nirmata Sangh v. State of Jharkhand (January 15, 2026),[17] a Division Bench of Justices Sujit Narayan Prasad and Arun Kumar Rai rejected a writ petition by brick kiln operators who had been required to obtain environmental clearance and Pollution Control Board consents for soil extraction and brick manufacturing. The petitioners’ argument was that the removal of soil for brick-making has no adverse environmental impact and that, in any event, the District Mineral Foundation Trust contribution under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 was not attracted because brick earth is not a “mineral” in the operative sense. The Court rejected both contentions on the simple ground that “soil is also a part of environment and if the soil is being extracted for the purpose of brick kiln the same certainly have the environmental impact.” Brick earth, the Court noted, is listed as a minor mineral in Schedule 2 of the Jharkhand Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 2004, and the manufacturing process cannot be artificially separated from the extraction. It refused to allow the absence of obvious smoke or effluent to be confused with the absence of environmental impact.

The High Courts of this region are, on the whole, capable of vigorous, principled environmental adjudication. The question that follows, then, is when and why does this rigour falter?

What about the bad days?

If the above discussion is affirmative of the proactive role the High Courts have come to play in the development of environmental jurisprudence, the following discussion exposes some cracks. The cracks are at their clearest when one looks at the High Court of Chhattisgarh’s engagement, over fourteen years, with the Hasdeo coal belt. Three judgments form a sequence: Mangal Sai v. Union of India (May 11, 2022), Amrit Lal Bhagat v. State of Chhattisgarh (September 1, 2025), and the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Sangharsh Samiti appeal (April 2026). The legal context shifts slightly from one to the next while the result does not.

A chain of deviations

In Mangal Sai,[18] a Division Bench of Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice R.C.S. Samant disposed of five connected writ petitions filed by 156-odd tribal residents of Charpara Tara, Salhi, Hariharpur and Fattehpur villages in Surguja and Surajpur districts. The petitioners challenged the acquisition of about 1252 hectares of land for the Parsa coal block under the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957, by Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd. and its mine developer-operator. The grounds were familiar: that the Parsa block was in dense forest, that the PESA Act, 1996 had not been followed, that the gazette notifications under §§ 4(1) and 7(1) of the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957 (CB Act) were not properly served, that some Gram Sabha resolutions were fake. The Court held that gazette notifications had in fact been published; that, the CB Act not requiring personal service of generally addressed notifications, the want of personal service did not vitiate them; that some villagers had filed late objections, which the Coal Controller had considered; and that there was “gross delay” in approaching the Court — the petitions, filed in 2022, challenged notifications of 2017 and 2018. On this basis the petitions were dismissed, with no examination of the underlying ecological objections to mining in dense forest, and no consideration of whether the delay rule should yield where the consequences of the executive action are irreversible.

In Amrit Lal Bhagat,[19] delivered just seven months before the Hasdeo Aranya appeal and from the very same Court, a single Bench dismissed a petition by thirty-eight named residents of Mudagaon and Saraitola villages in Raigarh district. The petitioners had challenged the Stage II forest clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment in respect of 214.869 hectares of forest land for an open-cast coal mining project allotted to a State-owned generation company. Their grievance was that the diversion proceedings had been completed in violation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 — without the participation of the petitioners and without recognition of the community forest rights of their Gram Sabhas. The Court framed the threshold issue narrowly. “In absence of a resolution of the Gram Sabha authorizing the institution of the present proceedings,” the petitioners did not have the requisite locus standi, and in any case had an alternative remedy under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. The petition was dismissed as not maintainable.[20]

The logic here repays close attention. Community forest rights are, the Forest Rights Act says, vested collectively in the Gram Sabha. From that the Court derives a procedural conclusion: only the Gram Sabha, by formal resolution, can litigate to defend those rights. Individual residents who are members of the Gram Sabha and whose lives are directly affected by the diversion of community forest land may not approach the High Court without such a resolution. To require a Gram Sabha resolution before a writ challenge can even be heard is to interpose the very body whose capacity to deliberate and resolve the question may itself have been compromised by the State action under challenge — particularly where, as the Mangal Sai record indicates, allegations of fake Gram Sabha resolutions in the same coal belt had already been before this Court.

The contrast with how the same High Court has handled coal-related petitions by non-tribal individuals is instructive. In Ratan Kumar Jain v. State of Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh),[21] a Division Bench of Chief Justice Yatindra Singh and Justice Sunil Kumar Sinha entertained writ petitions filed in person by a Korea-district journalist challenging the illegal felling of trees by South Eastern Coalfields Limited at Chirmiri, with no question raised about his personal locus to challenge the operations of a public-sector coal company in his neighbourhood. The Court used the occasion to deliver one of the more memorable passages on environmental protection in the region: “Environment, trees are not devil; they are entitled to much better protection: after all, we have borrowed them from our children and have a pledge to return them back — if not in a better position then at least in the same position as we had got them.” The petitioner — a single individual, with no Gram Sabha resolution — was nominated to an independent monitoring committee. The doctrinal question is not whether Ratan Jain got the law of locus right and Amrit Lal Bhagat got it wrong, or vice versa. The doctrinal question is whether the same threshold of standing is being applied to the same kind of grievance. The honest answer, reading these cases together, is that it is not.

Hasdeo Aranya

The Hasdeo case carries forward the same logic. It is no different than any case with forest conservation on one side and the mining industry on the other. A healthy sprinkle of forest rights is what complicated, rightly so, the issue. The Hasdeo Aranya forest is called the lungs of Chhattisgarh. It is old-growth forest, ecologically and culturally significant, home to tribal communities who depend on it for subsistence. Coal sits beneath it.

What was the case?

After bureaucratic processes which included a sub-committee on Forest Advisory cautioning about the risks of large-scale mining, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) granted in-principle approvals for mining in the Hasdeo forest.[22] Later, the Chhattisgarh government passed orders diverting forest land for non-forest use in 2012. Both the MoEF and State government orders were set aside by the NGT.[23] However, the Supreme Court granted an interim stay. On the strength of such interim stay, and a new legislation on coal mining and block allocation, the permission for Phase I mining of the coal was given to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, the Rajasthan state-owned electricity company.[24]

Parallelly, proceedings for individual and community forest rights were being conducted wherein three community rights were granted to Ghatbarra village in 2013.[25] On January 8, 2016, the District Level Committee issued a notice stating that the Community Forest Rights earlier granted to Village Ghatbarra were cancelled.[26] It was the case of petitioners that they were not given a fair hearing before the Community Forest Rights (CFR) were cancelled.

The writ petition was filed, first challenging this 2016 notice by the DLC, and later amended their prayer to challenge the later orders by the MoEF for Phase II mining too.

The State’s reason for cancellation, recorded in the DLC’s notice of 08.01.2016, was chronological: the diversion order had been passed on March 28, 2012, whereas the three community forest rights in favour of Ghatbarra were recognised on September 3, 2013. The diversion preceded the recognition; therefore, on the State’s logic, the recognition was either erroneous or could not survive the prior diversion.

Two things ought to have given the court pause here, and neither was addressed. First, the chronology argument inverts the scheme of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Section 4 (5) of the Act bars eviction or removal of forest dwellers from forest land under their occupation till the recognition and verification process is complete.[27] The Act treats forest rights as pre-existing rights that the statute recognises, not as rights that the statute creates from the date of the recognition order.[28] On that reading, a 2013 recognition order documents rights that were always there, including in March 2012 when the diversion was approved. The State’s chronology, in other words, proves too little — it assumes the rights began in 2013, which is precisely what the Act denies.

Second, even if one were to accept the State’s premise, the cancellation of recognised rights triggers, at a minimum, the obligation to hear the rights-holders before extinguishing what the statute has acknowledged. The DLC’s notice of January 8, 2016 did not afford that hearing. The single judge’s view — that no opportunity needed to be given — sidesteps both the substantive point about when the rights came into existence and the procedural point about how recognised rights may be withdrawn.

One of the arguments by the State before the Hasdeo Aranya case was that since coal has already been mined out the subject lands, they cannot be considered as forests. If they cannot be considered as forests, no forest rights can be claimed. The Chhattisgarh government argued that the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Sangharsh does not have legal sanctity to represent the villagers.

Single Judge’s reasoning for Dismissal

The single judge dismissed the petition[29] on the following grounds:

(i) Diversion order (2012) is prior to CFR granting order (2013) and yet, the diversion was not challenged then or in this Writ Petition.

(ii) None of the petitioners showed that they have forest rights conferred on them or that they are aggrieved persons or that any Gram Sabha resolution has been passed to continue on with the petition.

(iii) The residents can be compensated in terms of money, if the forest rights have not been conferred according to the FRA, 2006.

The judge, after listing the grounds, stated as follows:

It wasn’t necessary for the respondents to provide the petitioners with an opportunity while taking a decision to withdraw the forest rights conferred on the villagers of Ghatbarra.

What is the issue with the Single Judge’s reasoning?

The issue with the single judge’s reasoning is not that he failed to be an activist judge. A writ petition is not a PIL, and the judge was right to treat it as such. The issue is narrower and harder to defend: even within the four corners of an ordinary writ petition under Article 226, the cancellation order of 2016 was open to challenge on its own terms. The petitioners had asked for it to be set aside on the ground that no hearing was given before community forest rights, once recognised, were withdrawn. That is a self-contained natural justice claim. It does not require the court to expand standing, revisit the 2012 diversion, or assume a PIL posture. It requires the court to ask one question: can a statutory right recognised under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 be cancelled without affording the rights-holders an opportunity of hearing? The single judge’s answer that “it wasn’t necessary for the respondents to provide the petitioners with an opportunity” is what merits scrutiny.

The court held that the petitioners had not established they were directly aggrieved persons with subsisting legal rights. These are tribal villagers. They are challenging the destruction of their ancestral forest. They claim community forest rights under a statute that was enacted specifically to recognise and protect those rights. The PIL jurisdiction exists because Justices Bhagwati and Krishna Iyer understood that marginalised people cannot always demonstrate ‘standing’ in the way that a property-owning litigant can.[30] While this was not a PIL, to turn a procedural requirement against the very people the Forest Rights Act was written for is to use a doctrine against its own purpose. One cannot read this stiffness charitably.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court, in the same year, in Vivek Kumar Sharma, held that environmental challenges cannot be defeated by limitation. To be hot and cold on locus of petitioners in sensitive environmental matters is not rooted in some deep philosophical underpinning. It is simply a choice that the court in one case makes to allow and makes in another to disallow on the basis of locus.

And then the Single Judge observed that monetary compensation could suffice for the loss of the forest. The appellants said what needed to be said, i.e., no amount of money restores an old-growth forest. The cultural rights, the subsistence, the biodiversity, the watershed function — none of it comes back with a cheque.

This is the polluter-pays principle being used to replace the precautionary principle, something that Justice Bhuyan’s Vanashakti dissent warned against.

The Appeal in Hasdeo Aranya

The Division Bench dismissed the writ appeal in April 2026.[31] The respondent mining company continued to press locus standi, res judicata, and finality. The Division Bench agreed, holding that the petition was a collateral assault on concluded proceedings and that monetary compensation arguments, “though conceptually appealing,” could not override the legal framework once statutory clearances had been granted and acted upon. The Division Bench stated as follows:

Courts, while sensitive to environmental concerns, are also required to balance competing public interests, particularly where projects have attained substantial completion and involve larger public utility considerations.

Now, this is not some isolated observation by a Division Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court. Its doctrinal substance comes from the Supreme Court itself — from the judgment in Vanashakti II, in which the apex court stated as follows:[32]

It can thus be seen that this Court clearly held that where the adverse consequences of ex-post facto approval outweigh the consequences of regularisation of operation of an industry by grant of ex-post facto approval and the industry or establishment concerned otherwise conforms to the requisite pollution norms, ex-post facto approval should be given in accordance with law, in strict conformity with the applicable rules, regulations and/or notifications.

The doctrinal tools used here — locus, delay, finality, monetary compensation — are the same tools available to any court. In Vivek Kumar Sharma, every one of them was considered and rejected. In Hasdeo Aranya, every one of them was accepted. In Anand Kumar and Hemant Shikarwar, the Jharkhand Bench reached for the same tools and used them, in the precautionary direction, against the State. The difference is not the law. The difference is coal.

Shanti Construction and the Procedural Double Standard

The Orissa High Court’s decision in Shanti Construction v. State of Odisha[33] raises a different kind of problem.

A construction company got temporary permission to excavate 2,000 cubic metres of earth for a railway project. It excavated about 2, 60, 580 cubic metres — 130 times the permitted quantity — from government land, including jungle category land. The NGT directed recovery of Rs. 1,20,10,000 as environmental compensation.

The High Court quashed the order. The Joint Committee’s inspection had been done without notice to the petitioner. The committee included regulatory bodies that were themselves accused of inaction. The quantification was sub-delegated to the Mining Officer without proper safeguards.

It is not wrong to be a stickler for rules and procedures, especially by authorities with penal powers. It is an important feature that the judiciary should imbibe itself with, surely. The NGT’s practice of farming out adjudicatory work to joint committees has real due process problems. No argument there.

But the company dug out 130 times what it was allowed to dig. That violation did not go anywhere. The court quashed the enforcement order and told the parties to pursue their rights before the appropriate authority. The enforcement was procedurally defective but the violation itself remains unaddressed.

The Odisha High Court in its order stated as follows:[34]

The NGT’s order of May 2, 2025 is vitiated by breach of natural justice by unlawful delegation of its judicial function to the joint committee without affording the petitioner a hearing. The alternative remedy of appeal does not preclude relief, since the order is tainted by fundamental unfairness.

A note of caution before drawing the comparison too tightly. The two cases are not perfectly parallel. Hasdeo Aranya was a constitutional challenge to executive decisions on forest diversion and rights cancellation; Shanti Construction was judicial review of a quasi-judicial NGT order said to be tainted by a natural justice defect. The doctrinal lenses differ, and a court reviewing tribunal action does have a sharper supervisory role on procedural fairness than a court reviewing a policy-laden executive choice. That much should be conceded.

What survives the concession, however, is the asymmetry in how the same threshold doctrines — i.e., alternative remedy, hearing, finality — are weighted against environmental stakes. In Shanti Construction, the existence of an alternative statutory appeal did not deter the High Court from intervening, because the want of a hearing was treated as a fundamental defect overriding the alternative-remedy bar. In Hasdeo Aranya, and again in Amrit Lal Bhagat, the want of a hearing before cancellation of recognised forest rights — or the absence of formal Gram Sabha authorisation — did not produce a comparable response; finality, locus and alternative-remedy considerations carried the day.

A similar asymmetry appears in M/s Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd. v. State of Odisha (September 25, 2024),[35] where the Odisha State Pollution Control Board had revoked a 2×600 MW coal-based thermal power plant’s Consent to Operate for direct discharge of wastewater into the Kakudia Nallah, which feeds the Tikira river. The plant was ordered shut. By the time the writ came up for hearing, the company had produced affidavits of compliance during pendency. The High Court quashed the revocation order, observing that the Writ Petition need not be kept pending unnecessarily, and remarking only — almost in passing — that “damage to the environment cannot get a tacit community tolerance.” The same Court that demands strict due process from the NGT when the polluter is the petitioner, accepts compliance-during-pendency as adequate when it is the polluter’s licence at stake. The two postures are not inconsistent in any narrow doctrinal sense. They are different defaults.

Quiet Changes in Language

In M/s Balasore Alloys Ltd. v. Union of India (3 November 2023)[36], the petitioner, a chromite mining lessee in Kaliapani, Jajpur district, had been kept out of a 64.463-hectare forest portion of its leasehold because the Stage II forest clearance had not issued. The Court walked through the chronology — initial mining lease in 2000, splitting of the lease into forest and non-forest blocks, withdrawal of an earlier writ, a string of applications for compensatory afforestation land and Net Present Value payments, and intermittent inaction by the State. The High Court issued a writ of mandamus directing the opposite parties to “grant necessary Stage II forest clearance in respect of the subject mineral block over an area 64.463 hectares… by complying all the formalities as expeditiously as possible without creating further hindrances in the matter.” One looks at this judgment in vain for any examination of the present condition of the forest in question, the cumulative impact of chromite mining in the Sukinda valley, or the population that lives downstream of these leaseholds. The Court’s mandamus is, on its face, a mandamus to discharge a statutory duty without delay. It is also, in substance, a judicial accelerant to the grant of a forest clearance, framed entirely in the lessee’s rights.

The Odisha Citizens’ Action Forum PIL[37] shows a related pattern, and it is in some ways more telling than Hasdeo Aranya, because here the Court was not even pushed by a contest between an industry and a forest community. There was no displacement at stake. There was no felling of trees in real time. The petition, brought by a Bhubaneswar-based forum, was about something much more anodyne in its framing: that mining lessees in Odisha were not extracting iron ore at the volumes their leases obligated them to, and that the State was not enforcing Rule 12 (1) (ee) of the Concession Rules, 2016, which permits the State to step in and carry out the mining itself at the lessee’s cost when the lessee defaults on its statutory obligations. That is the sum of the grievance. The lessees are not mining enough.

Now, one would think that this is exactly the kind of complaint a State government, with a full apparatus of mining officials, geological surveys, and a Department of Steel and Mines, would be able to address on its own. The State knows how much each lessee has been allotted. The State has the production figures. The State has the rule that lets it act. If lessees are sitting on iron ore reserves and not extracting them, the State can issue notices, levy penalties, invoke Rule 12 (1) (ee) and have the National Mineral Development Corporation step in. None of this requires a writ court. It is plain administrative function. And yet the High Court, instead of asking the obvious threshold question of why a constitutional court is being moved to do what an executive department is paid to do, took up the petition, called for affidavits, and eventually directed the State to invoke Rule 12 (1) (ee) and route the underutilised mines to NMDC.

The Court’s framing is what makes the case worth dwelling on. Iron ore reserves are described as having “potential capacity to meet the requisite requirements in the indigenous market.” The 2015 amendments to the MMDR Act[38] are described as a “radical shift” from executive fiat to a transparent auction regime. The Make in India initiative is invoked. Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd. v. State of Odisha[39] is cited at length for the proposition that the auction regime aims at eliminating discretion, attracting private investment and securing for the Government an enhanced share of the value of mineral resources. Article 39(b)[40] is mentioned, but only to ground a duty of “optimum, continuous and sustainable utilization” of minerals. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of resource governance.

This is not a case where the Court refused to consider environmental concerns because they were not raised. They were not raised, and that is precisely the point. The petition was framed to push for more extraction, and the Court accepted the frame without interrogating it. A High Court hearing a PIL is not a passive forum. It can, and routinely does in other contexts, expand the scope of the petition, call for the State to file additional reports, ask uncomfortable questions about cumulative impact. The Madhya Pradesh High Court did exactly this in Vivek Kumar Sharma when it went looking through departmental correspondence on its own. The Jharkhand High Court did the same in Anand Kumar when it unpacked the composition and reasoning of the so-called Expert Committee whose recommendation underlay the impugned buffer-zone notification. Here, the Orissa High Court did the opposite. It accepted, at face value, that the constitutional concern in the matter was underutilisation, and on that basis it issued a direction that the State further activate iron ore mining across blocks where production was low. There is no sign in the judgment that the Court asked whether some of these blocks were not being mined for reasons that might actually deserve protection: a pending forest clearance issue, an unresolved claim under the Forest Rights Act, environmental compliance defaults that might justify slowing down rather than speeding up extraction. The premise was that the mines must be mined.

When a court starts with the question ‘has this lessee complied with its conditions’ instead of ‘should extraction happen here given what we know about this ecosystem,’ the answer is mostly predetermined.

What Comes Through

A few things come through when you look at all of this together.

Locus standi and delay are being applied selectively. Same doctrine, opposite results, depending on what is being challenged. The law has not changed between Vivek Kumar Sharma and Hasdeo Aranya, between Ratan Jain and Amrit Lal Bhagat, between Anand Kumar and Mangal Sai. The economic interest has.

The fait accompli has become its own justification. Phase-I is done, so Phase-II must follow. The project is built, so the clearance must be regularised. The compliance came during pendency, so the revocation must be quashed. This rewards the very non-compliance it is supposed to prevent. The Vanashakti review relied partly on this logic too: the cost of undoing what had been built without clearance became the reason not to undo it.

Money is being treated as a substitute for ecology, without anyone checking whether the money actually does anything. Where the polluter-pays principle survives in its proper form — as in Hemant Shikarwar — it is imposed on identified violators after a finding of breach. Where it is abused — as in the Hasdeo Aranya disposal — it replaces the precautionary principle and lets the breach itself stand.

And there is a diagnostic that is quite reliable: look at whether the judgment engages with ecological evidence. Vivek Kumar Sharma is full of it. Forest survey reports, departmental findings, species data. Anand Kumar interrogates the composition of the Expert Committee and the substance of the NOC. Hemant Shikarwar relies on an independent DLSA report of abandoned pits and degraded farmland. Jharkhand Human Rights Conference works from photographic evidence of dumped sharps. The Hasdeo Aranya dismissal does not engage with the ecological significance of the forest at all. Balasore Alloys does not weigh the chromite footprint in the Sukinda valley. The Orissa iron-ore PIL does not so much as look up at the forest cover. Courts have only come up with pro-environment jurisprudence when they looked at hard evidence.

Looking Ahead

This present exercise is neither a whistle nor some big breaking, to project some kind of institutional takeover. It is simply a neutral probe, with utmost respect for and faith in the rich jurisprudence that countless movements have collectively achieved via a progressive judiciary.

The Indian Environmental Law Regime is not a simple one. It is filled with exceptions, absolutisms, resulting paradoxes, rectifying reviews, and much more. The Vanashakti split is proof of that complexity. The precautionary principle is the cornerstone, and a court cannot be seen backtracking on it. That position finds its fullest expression in Vivek Kumar Sharma, in the Jharkhand Bench’s 2026 quartet, and in the Chhattisgarh High Court’s suo moto responsiveness on industrial waste. It finds its starkest negation in Hasdeo Aranya, in the locus-standi disposal of Amrit Lal Bhagat, and in the quieter accommodation of mining capital in the Orissa lease cases.

The cracks appear when the economic interests are large and state-backed; when the affected communities are Adivasi/tribal, rural, and litigation-poor; when the extraction has progressed far enough to create a fait accompli; and when the environmental harm is diffuse and long-term and falls on people without political voice. Where these conditions converge, courts, sometimes, seem to reach for the procedural exit, sidestepping the petitioner environmental question.

Whether these cracks hold in Northern and Western India is what the next two parts will try to find out.

Note:

The 3-part series is based on strong empirical standing. Part I deals with substantive high court pronouncements coming from resource rich Central and Eastern India- Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. Part II (Western India) deals with the high courts of Bombay, Karnataka and Goa. Finally, Part III (Northern India) reflects on judgments from Delhi, Punjab & Haryana, Uttarakhand and Allahabad.

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

[1]Vanashakti v. Union of India, decided 16 May 2025 (Supreme Court of India, Bench: Oka & Bhuyan, JJ.). Striking down MoEFCC Notification S.O. 804(E) dated March 14, 2017 and Office Memorandum dated July 7, 2021.

[2]The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, §§ 3, 6 read with the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006 (S.O. 1533(E), dated September 14, 2006).

[3]Vanashakti Review – Order on Review Petition (Nov. 2025), three-Judge Bench, majority opinion by the Chief Justice of India with Vinod Chandran, J., concurring; Bhuyan, J., dissenting.

[4]Common Cause v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 499; Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd. v. Rohit Prajapati, (2020) 17 SCC 157; Electrosteel Steels Ltd. v. Union of India, (2021) SCC OnLine SC 1247.

[5]Vivek Kumar Sharma v. State of Madhya Pradesh, W.P. No. 16931/2021, decided by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh, Indore Bench (Division Bench), March 1, 2025.

[6]M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, (2024) SCC OnLine SC 570 (recognising Articles 14 & 21 protection against the adverse effects of climate change and reaffirming the precautionary principle).

[7]Vivek Kumar Sharma, supra n. 5, ¶ 104.

[8]In Re: Functioning of 5,961 Industries without Valid Consent – Suo Moto W.P. (PIL), High Court of Madhya Pradesh, Indore Bench (2025).

[9]See, inter alia, In Re: Suo Moto PIL based on news item “Karkhano Ke Avshesh Aag Ke Havale,” WPPIL 106 of 2023, High Court of Chhattisgarh, order dated 21 March 2024 (hazardous waste burning at Sirgitti industrial estate, Bilaspur); Jharkhand Human Rights Conference v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 1385 of 2012, decided February 26, 2026 (biomedical waste management).

[10]Jharkhand Human Rights Conference v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 1385 of 2012, judgment dated February 26, 2026, Neutral Citation No. 2026:JHHC:5689-DB (Sonak, C.J. and Rajesh Shankar, J.).

[11]Jharkhand Human Rights Conference, supra n. 10, ¶¶ 18–24 (continuing mandamus from 2012 to 2026; expansion of treatment infrastructure from one CBWTF to six operational facilities across Ramgarh, Lohardaga, Dhanbad, Pakur and Deoghar).

[12]Court on Its Own Motion v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 3935 of 2020, Order dated February 16, 2026 (Sonak, C.J. and Rajesh Shankar, J.) (proposed national highway realignment to avoid Core Zone of wildlife and Eco-Sensitive Zone; animal-passage plan directed).

[13]Anand Kumar v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 3950 of 2024, order dated April 16 , 2026 (Sonak, C.J. and Rajesh Shankar, J.).

[14]In Re: T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, (2022) 10 SCC 544, ¶ 56.1 (one-kilometre eco-sensitive zone around protected areas), as modified by order dated April 26, 2023.

[15]Hemant Kumar Shikarwar v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 290 of 2013, judgment dated May 7, 2026, Neutral Citation No. 2026:JHHC:13668-DB (Sonak, C.J. and Rajesh Shankar, J.).

[16]Hemant Kumar Shikarwar, supra n. 15, ¶ 79 (directions including monthly District Level Task Force meetings; review of all statutory permissions; CCTV and GPS-based monitoring; criminal prosecution under MMDR Act §§ 21–22; environmental compensation on the polluter-pays principle).

[17]Jharkhand Int Nirmata Sangh v. State of Jharkhand, W.P. (C) No. 617 of 2021, judgment dated January 15, 2026, Neutral Citation No. 2026:JHHC:1169-DB (Sujit Narayan Prasad and Arun Kumar Rai, JJ.) (brick kiln operators’ challenge to environmental clearance and CTO requirement dismissed; District Mineral Foundation Trust payments held attracted).

[18]Mangal Sai v. Union of India, W.P. (C) No. 302 of 2022 and connected matters, decided May 11, 2022 by the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur (Arup Kumar Goswami, C.J. and Rajendra Chandra Singh Samant, J.) (challenge by 156+ petitioners from Salhi, Hariharpur, Fattehpur and Tara villages to acquisition of land for Parsa Coal Block under the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957, dismissed on grounds of delay and merits).

[19]Amrit Lal Bhagat v. State of Chhattisgarh, W.P. (C) No. 2361 of 2025, decided 1 September 2025 by the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur (Arvind Kumar Verma, J.), Neutral Citation No. 2025:CGHC:44375.

[20]Amrit Lal Bhagat, supra n. 23, ¶¶ 16–17 (dismissing the petition as not maintainable for want of express Gram Sabha authorisation and pointing the petitioners to the alternative remedy under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010).

[21]Ratan Kumar Jain v. State of Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh), W.P. No. 4520 of 2000 and W.P. (C) No. 5354 of 2009, decided 5 December 2012 by the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur (Yatindra Singh, C.J. and Sunil Kumar Sinha, J.).

[22]Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; Stage-I and Stage-II forest clearances accorded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for the Parsa East & Kanta Basan (PEKB) and Parsa coal blocks in the Hasdeo Arand region.

[23]Sudiep Shrivastava v. Union of India & Ors., Order of the National Green Tribunal, Principal Bench, dated March 24 , 2014; subsequently stayed by the Supreme Court.

[24]Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015, read with the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Rules, 2014 and allocation orders to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd. (RVUNL).

[25]Recognition under §§ 3(1)(i) and 5 of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 in respect of Village Ghatbarra (resolution of the Gram Sabha and order of the Sub-Divisional Level Committee, dated 3 September 2013).

[26]Notice / Order of the District Level Committee, Surguja, dated January 8, 2016 purporting to cancel the Community Forest Rights of Village Ghatbarra.

[27]The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, § 4(5).

[28]See generally Orissa Mining Corp. Ltd. v. Ministry of Environment & Forest, (2013) 6 SCC 476 (Niyamgiri); and Banwasi Seva Ashram v. State of U.P., (1986) 4 SCC 753, on the pre-existing nature of forest dwellers’ rights.

[29]Hasdeo Arand Bachao Sangharsh Samiti v. State of Chhattisgarh, W.P. (C) before the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur (Single Judge), order of dismissal.

[30]Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, (1984) 3 SCC 161; S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, 1981 Supp SCC 87, on relaxed standing in public interest matters.

[31]Hasdeo Arand Bachao Sangharsh Samiti v. State of Chhattisgarh, Writ Appeal, decided by the Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh in April 2026.

[32]Vanashakti Review (Nov. 2025), supra n. 3, majority opinion (extract on conditions for ex post facto regularisation).

[33]M/s Shanti Construction v. State of Odisha, W.P. (C) before the High Court of Orissa at Cuttack (decided January 2026), arising from the order of the National Green Tribunal, Eastern Zonal Bench, dated May 2, 2025.

[34]Shanti Construction, supra n. 36, extracted from the High Court’s order quashing the NGT’s direction.

[35]M/s Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd. v. State of Odisha, W.P. (C) No. 8822 of 2024, order dated September 25, 2024 (Dr. S.K. Panigrahi, J.) (consent to operate, revoked by the Odisha State Pollution Control Board for direct discharge of wastewater into the Kakudia Nallah feeding the Tikira river, restored).

[36]M/s Balasore Alloys Ltd. v. Union of India, W.P. (C) decided November 3 , 2023 by the High Court of Orissa (Dr. B.R. Sarangi, A.C.J. and M.S. Raman, J.) (mandamus issued directing grant of Stage II forest clearance for chromite mining over 64.463 hectares in Kaliapani, Jajpur District).

[37]Odisha Citizens’ Action Forum v. State of Odisha, W.P. (PIL) before the High Court of Orissa at Cuttack, concerning enforcement of Rule 12(1)(ee) of the Mineral (Other than Atomic and Hydro Carbons Energy Minerals) Concession Rules, 2016.

[38]Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015 (Act 10 of 2015).

[39]Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd. v. State of Odisha, (2017) 2 SCC 125.

[40]Constitution of India, art. 39(b) (Directive Principles – distribution of material resources of the community to subserve the common good).

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The post Cracks in Indian Environment Jurisprudence: An examination of High Courts of central India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That belief is fragile. It can endure for generations and yet weaken quietly, not through dramatic rupture but through gradual shifts in political culture. Institutions may survive, elections may continue, constitutions may remain unchanged, yet the moral foundations of citizenship can erode. The outward form of democracy remains while its inner ethic changes. Secularism is often the first casualty of that transformation, because it is the principle that prevents the majority from confusing its cultural identity with the nation itself.

Secularism is often misunderstood as hostility to religion. In many plural societies, it has meant something more demanding: not the exclusion of religion from public life, but the refusal of the state to privilege one faith as the defining essence of the nation. Religious traditions may shape festivals, language, and collective memory. Public life may remain visibly religious. Yet the political order must preserve equal standing among communities. The state may engage with religions, but it cannot derive its legitimacy from any one of them.

The secular state did not emerge solely from abstract philosophy. It was born from historical exhaustion. Across Europe, centuries of confessional conflict taught societies that political order could not survive if sovereignty belonged to a single religious truth. The memory of the Thirty Years’ War, sectarian massacres, and religious empire produced a practical conviction: citizenship had to supersede creed. Secularism was therefore not conceived as irreligion, but as a political settlement after the discovery that sacred certainty could destroy civil peace.

In India, this insight emerged through a different tragedy. The Partition of India revealed that when religion became the basis of statehood, centuries of coexistence could collapse into mass displacement and violence. The republic that followed chose a radically different path. It refused to define the nation through a single faith despite the overwhelming numerical presence of one religious majority. Citizenship, not belief, became the formal basis of belonging.

That choice was historically remarkable. India was not a homogeneous nation-state but a civilizational mosaic of languages, castes, sects, tribes, and regions. The republic’s founders wagered that diversity could endure not by assimilation but by constitutional equality. Secularism in India, therefore, differed from the Western model of strict separation between church and state. Religion remained visible in public life, and the state often engaged with religious institutions. The principle was not exclusion but equal dignity among communities within a common civic order.

A Shared Inheritance

Indian Muslims are not a peripheral chapter in the story of India; they are among its principal authors. Across centuries, they have helped shape the country’s civilizational fabric through architecture, language, music, governance, scholarship, and commerce. The plural culture that defines much of the subcontinent emerged through sustained exchange among communities, and Muslims were central to that process. To narrate India without this inheritance is to tell only part of its story.

In independent India, this legacy evolved into nation-building. In science and public life, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam embodied the aspirations of a modern republic, shaping India’s missile and space programmes while inspiring generations. In education, Abul Kalam Azad laid the foundations of modern higher learning, while Zakir Husain deepened that vision through scholarship and public service. Leaders such as Rafi Ahmed Kidwai strengthened the early administrative and political architecture of the republic.

In business and industry, Azim Premji transformed Wipro into a global enterprise while redefining corporate philanthropy through education. Yusuf Hamied expanded access to affordable medicine through Cipla, making life-saving drugs widely available and reshaping public health equity.

The republic’s constitutional and institutional foundations also bear this imprint. M. Hidayatullah upheld constitutional continuity during uncertain times, while jurists such as A. M. Ahmadi and M. C. Chagla strengthened the judiciary and the republic’s legal philosophy. Fathima Beevi broke historic barriers as the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court judge. In diplomacy and public life, Asaf Ali represented India in its formative years, while Idris Hasan Latif rose to the highest ranks of national defence.

The symbolic and political foundations of the nation also reflect this shared authorship. Surayya Tyabji contributed to the design of India’s national flag, while her husband, Badaruddin Tyabji, belonged to a distinguished constitutional tradition. The freedom movement was shaped by powerful voices such as Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali, whose activism was deeply shaped by their mother, Abadi Bano Begum—one of the earliest and most forceful women’s voices of anti-colonial resistance. Alongside them, the reformist and aristocratic legacy associated with the Begum of Awadh represents another important strand of India’s layered political history.

Regional Muslim polities also contributed significantly to institutional and social development. The Nizam of Hyderabad presided over one of the most influential princely states. At the same time, the Begums of Bhopal created an enduring legacy of education, reform, and public welfare that shaped modern institutional culture.

In arts and culture, A. R. Rahman carried Indian music to global audiences, while Bismillah Khan elevated the shehnai into a classical concert instrument. Mohammed Rafi defined the emotional grammar of Hindi film music across generations. In cinema, Dilip Kumar redefined screen acting, while Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan became defining figures of modern popular culture. Shabana Azmi, Waheeda Rehman, Naseeruddin Shah, and M. F. Husain further enriched India’s artistic imagination.

In literature and journalism, Qurratulain Hyder explored memory and migration; Khwaja Ahmad Abbas bridged journalism and cinema; M. J. Akbar shaped political commentary; while Rahi Masoom Raza, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, and Javed Akhtar expanded the moral and literary imagination of modern India.

Sport reflects the same shared legacy. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Mohammad Azharuddin, Zaheer Khan, Mohammed Kaif, and Syed Mushtaq Ali shaped Indian cricket across generations. In hockey, Aslam Sher Khan, Mohammad Shahid, and Zafar Iqbal strengthened India’s global standing. Sania Mirza and Syed Modi extended that excellence into international sport.

The significance of these contributions lies not in isolated achievement but in their cumulative pattern—stretching across institutions, disciplines, and generations. Taken together, they show how Indian Muslims have helped build the republic’s scientific capacity, strengthen its democratic institutions, and enrich its cultural and intellectual life. Their presence is not episodic but structural, running through the very architecture of modern India.

The Slow Erosion of Equality

The crisis begins when the majority community ceases to see itself as one part of the nation and comes to regard itself as the nation’s authentic owner. At that point, the distinction between citizenship and cultural inheritance collapses. The nation is no longer understood as a legal community of equals but as the historical possession of one tradition. Minorities retain formal rights, yet their belonging becomes conditional. They are tolerated as residents rather than recognised as equal co-authors of the republic.

This process rarely announces itself as a rejection of democracy. It often advances through democratic means. Elections provide legitimacy. Popular majorities empower governments that claim to restore the historical rights of the majority community. Electoral success is then invoked as proof that the state should reflect the majority’s civilisational identity. Political disagreement becomes cultural betrayal. Opposition is framed not as dissent from government but as disloyalty to the nation itself.

The challenge in India lies less in formal dismantling than in a shift of national self-understanding. Public ceremonies, educational narratives, historical memory, and political rhetoric increasingly align the state with one civilisational story. The constitutional framework remains, yet its symbolic centre changes. A republic founded on equal citizenship risks becoming culturally graded.

Democratic decline seldom begins with the destruction of institutions; it begins with their moral repurposing. Courts may continue to function, universities may continue to teach, and elections may continue to be held. Yet the ethos that animates them shifts. Institutions begin to internalise the assumptions of majoritarian power. Bureaucracies enforce selectively. Public media amplify one narrative. Silence becomes political, because institutions that should resist instead learn to accommodate.

This transformation is not only legal but atmospheric. A society need not revoke rights to alter belonging. It can create insecurity through rhetoric, targeted policing, selective prosecution, and vigilante enforcement. Citizens remain equal before the law on paper, yet feel perpetually scrutinised. Their citizenship remains legal, but no longer emotionally secure. Fear becomes ambient, shaping how people move, speak, worship, and participate.

Memory, Myth, and Majoritarian Power

Such transformations affect institutions beyond minority rights. Universities, media, courts, and civil society depend on the principle that criticism is compatible with citizenship. When the majority’s identity fuses with the nation, dissent becomes suspect. Journalists are portrayed as enemies, scholars as subversive, activists as foreign agents. Institutions survive but lose independence because they are measured against loyalty to the majority’s historical self-image.

A central mechanism of this shift is the rewriting of memory. The majority is encouraged to see itself as historically wronged even while politically dominant. Ancient invasions, medieval empires, colonial humiliation, and modern political contests are woven into one narrative of civilisational injury. Historical complexity gives way to moral drama. The majority becomes the eternal victim whose dominance appears as delayed justice.

This politics of grievance is powerful because it converts dominance into victimhood. Once the majority believes itself threatened, measures that weaken minorities appear defensive. Restriction becomes protection. Exclusion becomes restoration. Citizens are invited to feel simultaneously powerful and aggrieved—heirs to greatness and victims of history.

Majoritarian politics thrives on mythic time. It collapses centuries into a single emotional present. Old conquests become current injuries. Long-dead rulers become contemporary enemies. Memory is mobilised not to understand the past but to authorise the present. In such narratives, reconciliation appears as surrender and pluralism as weakness.

Economic and technological changes intensify this dynamic. Urbanisation dissolves traditional forms of belonging. Economic inequality produces resentment. Social media accelerates the spread of rumours and symbolic conflicts. Political movements fuse cultural nationalism with development, welfare, and strong leadership. Citizens are offered not only economic aspiration but a story of civilisational recovery. The nation becomes an emotional project, and secular restraint begins to appear rootless or unpatriotic.

India and the Global Future of Plural Democracy

What makes secular decline especially dangerous is normalisation. It proceeds through repetition. What once provoked outrage gradually becomes ordinary. Inflammatory speech, selective policing, communal targeting, and symbolic exclusion cease to shock. Citizens adapt. Institutions accommodate the acceptable range of shifts. Democracy may preserve elections while losing the plural ethos that confers moral legitimacy on elections.

This crisis extends far beyond India. Across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, majoritarian identities increasingly seek political expression as cultural entitlement. Immigration, demographic change, and economic anxiety create fertile ground for narratives of belonging and exclusion. The stranger becomes a political symbol. Citizenship becomes conditional on cultural conformity.

The global significance of India lies in scale and example. It is the world’s largest democracy and among its most diverse societies. If such a polity can sustain equal citizenship across profound civilizational differences, it strengthens the case for plural democracy everywhere. If it yields to cultural majoritarianism, it reinforces a darker proposition: that deep diversity ultimately requires one dominant identity to govern all others.

This pattern can be seen elsewhere. In Hungary, Turkey, Israel, and the United States, democratic legitimacy has increasingly been invoked to narrow constitutional pluralism. The challenge is no longer whether people can vote. It is whether majorities, after winning, can remain faithful to equality.

Secularism, therefore, matters not as a technical doctrine but as an ethical discipline. It asks the majority to accept restraint. It demands that numerical power not become moral entitlement. It insists that the stranger, the minority, and the dissenter are not outsiders but co-owners of the nation. That discipline is difficult because majoritarian politics offers emotional rewards: belonging, grievance, pride, and historical redemption.

The deeper crisis is moral. Secular democracy depends on a simple but demanding idea: that people can share a political future without sharing a single faith. It asks citizens to value equal rights above inherited hierarchy. It requires the state to treat difference not as a threat but as a condition of freedom.

A secular republic is not secured by courts alone, nor by constitutions, nor by ceremonial declarations of tolerance. It survives only when citizens accept a discipline more difficult than victory: the discipline of sharing power with those they did not choose, do not resemble, and may not fully understand.

When that ethic erodes, democracy may continue procedurally, but its soul changes. Citizenship survives in law but weakens in experience. Belonging becomes graded. The republic becomes a homeland for some and a conditional residence for others.

The siege of secularism is therefore not merely the rise of religious politics. Religion has always shaped public life. The deeper transformation occurs when the state ceases to mediate among communities and begins to embody one community’s historical self-image. At that point, the republic no longer belongs equally to its citizens. It becomes the inheritance of the majority, while others inhabit it by permission.

That is why the future of secularism remains a central question of the twenty-first century. It determines whether democracy can truly sustain equality amid big differences, or whether every plural society eventually yields to the oldest political instinct: that the majority alone owns the nation, and the rest belong only by grace.

…

Moin Qazi is an Indian author and development leader who advanced dignity-centred, community-led change. A pioneer of microfinance and grassroots institutions, he fused ethics with social innovation. With deep interdisciplinary scholarship, he bridged policy, justice, and lived realities. His legacy affirms ethical leadership and people’s agency as drivers of India’s progress…

Courtesy: The New Age Islam

The post The Faultlines In Secularism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

From the moment C. Joseph Vijay assumed power in Tamil Nadu, a well-oiled machinery of disinformation has been in overdrive. What distinguishes this particular misinformation wave from routine political spin is its structural character— it is not merely spontaneous enthusiasm from supporters, but an organised, multi-layered ecosystem comprising TVK-aligned influencer pages, meme networks, WhatsApp forwards, and, most alarmingly, mainstream commercial media houses that appear to have abdicated their basic editorial responsibility.

This is not simply a first-time entrant indulging in political cheerleading. This is a calculated attempt and systematic erasure of the DMK government’s policy legacy and its reattribution to a new administration that has, in many cases, not issued a single order, notification, or Government Order to justify the credit it is claiming. Interestingly, when the Modi 1.0 government came to power, a similar tool-kit was used by the Union government to appropriate previous government schemes through re-naming!

Case 1: The Phantom Government Order — Chairs in Revenue Offices

On May 16, 2026, a story swept across Tamil Nadu’s commercial media landscape: the Vijay-led TVK government had, in an act of compassionate governance, directed revenue department offices across the state to place chairs for citizens — so that the public would be made to sit before being attended to by officials. The story was framed as a landmark humanising reform, a signal of a “people’s government” in action.

TVK’s social media network amplified this with characteristic efficiency. Influencer pages shared it. Meme pages celebrated it. The news channels carried it.

There was one problem. The Government Order (GO) cited carried a date of May 15, 2025 — a full year before the TVK government came to power. It was a GO passed by the MK Stalin-led DMK government.

No correction was issued by most outlets. No clarification trended. The narrative had already done its work — lodging itself in public memory as a Vijay government initiative. The commercial media, which holds fact-checking as its foundational professional obligation, did not merely fail in that duty — it actively participated in the misattribution. Whether by editorial negligence or deliberate complicity, the outcome is the same: the public was deceived.

This is a textbook case of policy laundering — taking a prior government’s documented action, stripping it of its original context and authorship, and presenting it as fresh governance by a new regime.

Case 2: The TNPSC/SSC/IBPS Coaching Claim — Erasing the Naan Mudhalvan Legacy

The second case follows an identical pattern, and is arguably more egregious given the scale of the scheme being misappropriated.

Within days of the new government’s formation, news began circulating — again across both commercial channels and TVK’s social media architecture — that CM C. Joseph Vijay had directed the government to provide free coaching and training for competitive examinations including TNPSC, SSC, IBPS, and related government job entrance tests. The story was framed as a bold initiative to support Tamil Nadu’s youth in their aspirations for public sector employment.

The truth, however, is not merely different — it is extensively documented.

Naan Mudhalvan, launched under former Chief Minister MK Stalin, is one of the most significant skilling and career development schemes in Tamil Nadu’s recent history. Under this flagship programme, students have been receiving structured coaching for UPSC Civil Services, TNPSC, SSC, IBPS, and other competitive examinations for over three years. The results are not anecdotal — students trained under the Naan Mudhalvan Scheme have successfully cleared Civil Services examinations, with selections to the IAS, IPS, and allied services standing as verifiable testimony to the programme’s reach and effectiveness.

Naan Mudhalvan, a flagship skill development and competitive examination coaching scheme, was launched by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on March 1, 2022, implemented jointly by the Department of School Education and the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC), with the goal of skilling 10 lakh students annually by bridging the gap between academic learning and industry requirements. The scheme is not a vague or symbolic initiative — it has a dedicated institutional vertical for civil services aspirants. Under the Naan Mudhalvan Competitive Exams Vertical, 1,000 candidates are shortlisted every year through a screening test, receiving ₹7,500 per month for 10 months, along with access to full-time residential coaching at the All India Civil Services Coaching Center in Chennai and the Anna Centenary Civil Services Coaching Academies in Coimbatore and Madurai. The scheme also supports candidates beyond the preliminary stage: those who clear the UPSC Mains receive a financial assistance of ₹25,000, and those who advance to the Interview stage receive ₹50,000.

The results of this sustained, three-year institutional investment are not anecdotal. They are on public record. In the UPSC Civil Services Examination 2024, three Tamil Nadu candidates figured in the national top 50 ranks — B. Sivachandran at AIR 23, S. Subash Karthik at AIR 29, and R. Monica at AIR 39 — all three of whom were trained under the Naan Mudhalvan Competitive Exams Vertical. In total, 50 aspirants cleared the UPSC that year through the scheme, of whom 18 underwent full-time residential coaching and two cleared the examination in Tamil medium. Monica, who secured AIR 39, spoke directly about the scheme’s role in her success: “I first got trained in the Naan Mudhalvan scheme. They gave me an incentive, which was very useful. They also promised me financial assistance for attending the interview.” Sivachandran, who became Tamil Nadu’s state topper, was one of 19 candidates from the scheme to clear UPSC CSE 2024, with his success under the initiative making him a role model for future aspirants in the state. As per a report in DT Next.

The Naan Mudhalvan scheme, managed by the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation under IAS officer Innocent Divya, has so far impacted over 28 lakh students across the state. The scheme’s official portal — naanmudhalvan.tn.gov.in — carries all selection lists, scholarship notifications, and programme documentation publicly, with official PDFs dated and verifiable going back to 2023. As per a report in OneIndia.

None of this infrastructure, institutional memory, financial commitment, or track record was created after May 2026. It belongs, in its entirety, to the MK Stalin government’s tenure. To attribute it to a new administration that has yet to issue a single Government Order or policy notification on the matter is not a compliment to the new government — it is a theft of credit from the old one, executed in broad daylight, with the media as a willing accomplice.

CM C. Joseph Vijay has issued no Government Order, no Executive Directive, no administrative notification, and no new policy framework for any such initiative. The infrastructure, the funding, the institutional arrangements, and the track record all belong to the DMK government’s tenure.

Yet the story was spread — relentlessly, as the pattern demands — without a single outlet pausing to ask: Where is the GO? What is the budget allocation? Which new institutions have been created? What is the implementation timeline?

These are not difficult questions. They are the minimum threshold of journalism. Their absence reveals something important about the current media environment in Tamil Nadu.

Case 3: The Bus Driver Mobile Ban — 2022 Law, 2026 Headlines

On May 19, 2026, established commercial media outlets ran a breaking news graphic announcing that the Tamil Nadu government had ordered a ban on government bus drivers using mobile phones while on duty. Drivers keeping phones in their uniform pockets was prohibited. Violations would attract strict disciplinary action. It was presented as a fresh government directive.

The order is real. The government that passed it is not the current one.

This is a law that came into force in February 2022 — under Chief Minister MK Stalin’s government. Asianet News Tamil reported it in full on 7 February 2022, with identical content: a ban on government bus drivers using mobile phones while on duty, strict action for violations, issued by the Transport Department. The order is over four years old.

Established media outlets broadcast it on 19 May 2026 as current news — without a date check, without source verification, without the basic editorial step of asking whether this directive already existed. Whether this was careless journalism or deliberate reattribution is a question these outlets owe their audiences an answer to. Either way, the effect is the same: a four-year-old Stalin-era public safety order is laundered into the TVK government’s early governance record.

This is not an isolated lapse. It is the third documented instance — within the first two weeks of the TVK government — of existing policy being stripped of its origin and recycled as new. The chairs in revenue offices. The Naan Mudhalvan coaching scheme. And now, a bus driver mobile ban from 2022.

When media outlets with state-wide reach operate this way, are they making errors or making choices?

A Note on Responsible Journalism: The Hindu’s Intervention

When most regional commercial channels were either actively spreading or uncritically amplifying this misinformation flood, The Hindu chose a different path. Their video analysis titled “Vijay, TVK and the rise of fake political narratives | Focus Tamil Nadu” — presented by D. Suresh Kumar, Deputy Resident Editor, Tamil Nadu — directly examined the surge of viral claims, AI-generated images, recycled government schemes, and fake “historic firsts” being attributed to the new administration. Within 19 hours it had crossed 55,000 views and 3,745 likes — proof that a substantial audience in Tamil Nadu is actively hungry for honest journalism. They simply cannot find it when the overwhelming weight of commercial media is pointed in the opposite direction. Responsible journalism in this environment is a choice. The outlets that did not make that choice made a different one.

The PhD MLAs Claim

A statistic went viral claiming that the TVK legislature party includes 6 PhD holders and numerous engineers — presented as proof of an exceptionally educated, meritocratic legislature. The claim was shared widely and celebrated across TVK’s online network.

The nomination affidavit data filed with the Election Commission tells a completely different story. Of TVK’s 108 total winners, these are the official figures from their own affidavits:

In other words, 33% – 35% of TVK’s elected MLAs — more than one in three — have HSC or below as their educational qualification. This is not a criticism of those MLAs. Educational qualification is not the sole measure of a legislator’s worth, and many capable public representatives have risen from humble educational backgrounds. The criticism here is directed entirely at the TVK online network that fabricated a flattering but false picture — inflating PhD holders six-fold, and claiming 126 MLAs when the actual number is 108.

The affidavits are public documents. The data is freely available. The viral claim required only a basic check to disprove. Nobody in the TVK ecosystem bothered — or wanted — to make that check.

SC Candidates in General Constituencies

It was widely claimed that TVK fielded as many as 28 SC candidates in general constituencies — presented as a historic gesture of social justice. Election Commission data tells a different story. Only one SC candidate was fielded in a general constituency — in Shankarapuram — and that candidate did not win. The gap between 28 and 1 is not a rounding error. It is a fabrication.

Tamil Nadu’s “First Woman Minister”

Among the most brazenly false claims circulating is that the Vijay government has given Tamil Nadu its first woman minister. Tamil Nadu has had two women Chief Ministers — J. Jayalalithaa and Janaki Ramachandran. Women ministers have served in Tamil Nadu’s cabinet since before Independence — including Rukmani Lakshmipathi and Jothi Venkatachalam. Sathiyavani Muthu aka Annai Sathiyavani Muthu have been in the cabinets of Arignar Anna and Kalaignar Karunanidhi. Even in the 16th LA led by MK Stalin, had Geetha Jeevan, Kayalvizhi Selvaraj in the cabinet. To claim a “first” here is not ignorance. It is an erasure of women who actually broke those barriers, decades before the TVK government existed.

SC Ministers and the “First” Portfolio Claim

It has been claimed that for the first time, a key portfolio like Education has been assigned to a Dalit Minister under Vijay’s government. This erases an entire history. Kakkan held the Home Ministry under Karmaveer Kamaraj’s cabinet. Parithi Ilamvazhuthi served as Deputy Speaker in Kalignar Karuanidhi’s regime. Dhanabal served as Speaker in J Jayalalitha’s regime. Kovi Chezhian, Madhivendhan held Higher Education and Forest & Tourism in MK Stalin’s government. Dalit leaders have held some of Tamil Nadu’s most consequential portfolios across multiple governments. Presenting this as a TVK first is not a celebration of Dalit representation — it is a falsification of the very history that Dalit political leaders fought to create.

The Chief Minister’s Grievance Portal — 25 Years Old

The CM’s helpline and online grievance portal has been presented as a Vijay government innovation. In reality, the Chief Minister’s Special Cell portal has been operational for over 25 years — serving citizens through DMK, AIADMK, and DMK governments alike. It predates TVK as a political organisation.

The Panic Button in Buses

The installation of panic buttons in buses for women’s safety has been projected as the fulfilment of a Vijay election promise — a new initiative, a new protection. Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) buses already have this facility operational. It was not invented by this government. It was inherited by it.

Still there are many more cases of such misinformation flooding, these are just examples.

The Structural Problem: When Media Becomes a Propaganda Relay

What we are witnessing is not a series of isolated errors. It is the normalisation of a post-verification media culture — one in which the virality of a claim, and its alignment with a dominant political mood, substitutes for the basic act of checking.

Several dynamics are at work here:

The Influencer-to-Mainstream Pipeline: Stories originate or are seeded — often without sourcing, often without documents — published by commercial media outlets looking for content that will generate engagement. By the time a GO is checked (if it ever is), the story has already circulated widely.

The Asymmetry of Correction: Misinformation spreads at the speed of sharing. Corrections, when they come, travel far slower and reach far fewer people. Media organisations that run false stories without correction are effectively choosing which version of reality reaches the public.

The Erasure of the DMK Record: Taken together, these stories form a coherent — if dishonest — narrative project: the systematic de-legitimisation of MK Stalin’s governance legacy and its absorption into the political identity of his successor. This is not incidental. Tamil Nadu has real, substantive policy achievements from the DMK years — in health, education, skilling, and social welfare — that deserve accurate attribution, both as a matter of historical record and democratic accountability.

A Note on Methodology

The cases documented here are not drawn from partisan counter-claims. They are verifiable through publicly available Government Orders on the Tamil Nadu government’s official portal, scheme documentation for Naan Mudhalvan, and the dates on the documents that the media itself published without reading carefully enough to notice the year.

Fact-checking in this context requires nothing more than reading the date on a document before broadcasting its contents. That this basic step was skipped — repeatedly, across multiple outlets — tells us everything we need to know about the current state of accountability journalism in Tamil Nadu.

Conclusion: The Chaos

The cases documented in this article are not exhaustive. They are representative. In the first two weeks of the TVK government alone, the recycled orders, misattributed schemes, unverified claims, and prematurely declared victories flooding Tamil Nadu’s media and social media landscape has been relentless. For every case fact-checked here, dozens more circulated unchallenged. So the question must be asked: is this a pattern? And if it is a pattern, who benefits from it?

In the digital era, misinformation is no longer merely a by-product of poor journalism. When a four-year-old GO becomes today’s headline, when a circular becomes a solved problem, when an announcement becomes a delivered promise — is that carelessness? Or is it architecture? When the same type of misattribution repeats itself across multiple issues, across multiple platforms, within the same two-week window, can we still call it coincidence?

The chaos that this kind of information flooding creates is worth examining carefully. When citizens cannot reliably distinguish what is real from what is recycled, what is new from what is four years old, what is promised from what is delivered — what happens to their ability to hold a government accountable? If the information environment is engineered to confuse rather than clarify, is democratic accountability even possible? Can you demand delivery on a promise if you have already been told, by a thousand voices simultaneously, that it has been delivered?

And here is the question that must be asked without flinching: have we not seen this playbook before? The systematic flooding of the information space with noise, the weaponisation of digital networks to manufacture consent, the deliberate blurring of the real and the fabricated — is this not precisely the strategy that the RSS-BJP machinery has deployed at the national level? Is this not how a government presiding over real failures continues to project an image of historic achievement? Is this not how legitimate criticism gets drowned, how democratic accountability gets quietly suffocated while the forms of democracy are preserved?

If the answer is yes — and the evidence increasingly points that way — then the next question is perhaps the most uncomfortable of all. A party that carries the intellectual and moral inheritance of Periyar and Ambedkar: is this the tradition it intends to honour? Periyar’s foundational demand was simple — think for yourself. Question authority. Refuse to be deceived. Ambedkar’s constitutional vision rested entirely on an informed, critically conscious citizenry as the only real safeguard of democracy. A political culture that actively works to prevent people from thinking clearly — is that carrying their legacy forward? Or is it dismantling it from within?

Democracy requires an informed public. When the distance between citizens and truth is deliberately widened, when people are kept away from what their government has actually done and not done — how can we expect any government to remain ideologically moral and accountable? And if we cannot expect accountability, what exactly are we left with?

The people of Tamil Nadu — and the democratic forces that wish to raise real issues, real failures, real demands — deserve an information environment in which truth has room to stand. The question is: who is responsible for ensuring that it does? And are they doing their job?

(The author is an independent Tamil journalist with YouTube channels, Peralai, AranSei)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Related:

Delimitation: A false solution driven by centralised power

PM Narendra Modi’s frequent visits to Tamil Nadu, his “love” for Tamil culture exposed

The post Flood of Fake Narratives & Misinformation: How TVK’s propaganda machine is attempting a re-write of TN’s governance history appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In doing so, as the media have widely reported, the court expressed “serious reservations” regarding several aspects of the apex court judgement through which it denied bail to activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who have been incarcerated, in jail, since 2020.

Besides this observation that has given rise to much public commentary given the clearly split verdict of India’s highest court on the granting of bail under UAPA, the bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan most notably observed in the same judgment that conviction rates in UAPA cases across India remained abysmally low, ranging between 1.5% and 4% from 2019-2023. Even worse still, conviction rates in Jammu and Kashmir have stayed below 1%.

The court therefore noted that these statistics suggest a high probability of acquittal in such cases, reported Live Law.

“For all India figures, we have 2% to 6% conviction, meaning thereby that there is 94% to 98% possibility of acquittal in such cases in the country. In so far as the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, the annual rate of conviction is always less than 1%. It means that at the end of the trial there is 99% possibility of acquittal in such cases,” the bench observed.

The present case and bail conditions

Who is Syed Iftikhar Andrabi? A village-level worker for the Rural Development department in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir, who was taken into preventive detention in August 2019, following the reading down of Article 370, but was released after the high court declared the detention legally untenable. Thereafter, he was subsequently arrested in June 2020 in connection with a National Investigation Agency (NIA) case alleging narco-terrorism activities.

Interestingly, his appeals for bail were denied by both the Special NIA Court as well as the Jammu and Kashmir high court. The prosecution alleged that on information provided by the appellant, drugs and cash were recovered from a co-accused’s premises, further claiming that his phone records linked him to operatives in Pakistan.

According to the May 18, Supreme Court judgment, no evidence was directly recovered from Andrabi’s person or premises, directing to release the appellant on bail, subject to conditions imposed by the special NIA court. The conditions stipulate that the appellant must deposit his passport and appear before the Handwara police station once every fortnight. He is also prohibited from threatening or influencing witnesses.

The UAPA has long since been criticised as an instrument of crushing dissent in India, with numerous activists and journalists slapped with cases under the draconian rule. In Kashmir, the act has seen some of its most controversial use.

Previous analyses of this counter-terror law may be read here, here and here.

Low rates of conviction

Making a reference to official data presented before the parliament by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, drawn from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures covering 2019-2023, the bench stated that the all-India conviction rate in UAPA cases falls between 1.5-4%.

What this means that a person charged under the act faces a 96% to 98.5% probability of acquittal. The court added, “In so far as the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, the annual rate of conviction is always less than 1%. It means that at the end of the trial there is 99% possibility of acquittal in such cases.”

Hence, referring to the high rate of exoneration for the accused in such cases, the court emphasised that “bail is the rule and jail the exception.” Invoking an earlier ruling, Union of India versus K.A. Najeeb, the judgement reiterated that Section 43D(5) of UAPA cannot be used in isolation to deny bail and does not serve as a blanket instrument for prolonged pre-trial detention.

The Order passed by the Supreme Court of India may be read here.

Related:

Supreme Court reasserts KA Najeeb, warns against “hollowing out” constitutional protections in UAPA cases; questions Umar Khalid bail verdict

Supreme Court restores Article 21 safeguards, calls 24-month UAPA custody without charge sheet illegal; sets aside Gauhati HC’s reliance on Sec 43D(7)

Allahabad HC grants bail in UAPA case over WhatsApp video; raises questions on overuse of stringent national security laws

The post UAPA: ‘99% Possibility of Acquittal’: What the SC said on Conviction Rates appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In this wider context, therefore, this attempt, “India Economic & Social Justice Report 2025”, authored by none less than Professor K S Chalam, former Vice Chancellor, Dravida University, Andhra Pradesh and former Member, Union Public Service Commission, Chairman, Institute for Economic and Social Justice, Vishakhapatnam, is both significant and path-breaking. This report analyses the historical, constitutional, and socio-economic landscape of justice in India, with a specific focus on marginalised communities. This report is first of its kind to measure and indicate where both the Union and State governments stand in providing constitutional guarantees of Justice –both economic and social— equally and to all citizens of the country. Inspired by Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), this report has examined several indictors to determine the Economic and Social Justice Index.

Finally, it has fixed following three dimensions.

1: MPCE (monthly per capita expenditure) per family, among Scheduled Castes to signify economic Justice. (The MPCE for ST is not produced because, states the author, it reflects the same trend).

2: Atrocities committed on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe population published by NCRBI

3. Human rights violations as recorded by NHRC are considered for estimating the Index.

The report has followed a statistical method on the lines of UNDP’s HDI. The report presents data for two periods 2011 and 2023. It is surprising to find states that are economically proactive are socially regressive in protecting the SC and ST populations; as a result, the overall ranks of ESJI are getting depressed over a period of time for such states. The report provides data and information on castes, sub castes of SC, ST and OBC population by states with caste wise data on education, economic status, reservations etc given in the Appendix. This analytical appraisal under pioneering concepts reviewing 75 years of the implementation of the Constitution is both profoundly innovative and also, bold.

The text begins with highlighting the concept of “Justice” in the Indian Constitution noting that it was heavily influenced by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who served as the Chairman of the Drafting Committee.  The report cited how Ambedkar argued in the Constituent Assembly that social and economic justice could only be achieved through a socialistic economy, including the nationalisation of land and industry. The Preamble places “Justice—social, economic, and political” as its first element, signalling its role as the ultimate goal of the Republic.  The report emphasises that democracy in India is a “top dressing” on an undemocratic soil, requiring the cultivation of constitutional morality to overcome historical cultures of inequality as its back drop.

The report contrasts Western theories of justice with the Indian social reality of the caste system.  It discusses John Rawls’s “Justice as Fairness” and Amartya Sen’s critique, which utilises the Indian concepts of niti (organizational propriety) and nyaya (realized justice). The text argues that Western libertarian and liberal theories often fail to account for the “caste mode of production” and the “Composite Index of Discrimination” (CID) inherent in Indian society. To assess the achievements and limitations of the Constitution during the last 75 years of its operation, the report identified the instruments and institutions of justice with which they can be interrogated the transactions both in the legislature and in the judiciary. Given the limitations of the scope of the study, it broadly discusses the instruments of justice as legal documents, including Acts, Rights, Rules, Property, Budget provisions, Atrocity rates, Gini Co-efficients etc.

The institutions of Justice in India can be identified as the judiciary, civil society, market, and state represented by the proceedings of Parliament/Assembly and not necessarily the private institutional structures, as the report is concerned here with public documents: the Constitution and Government Reports .The process of delivering or dispensing social justice through the passing of various Acts, such as the SC ST (prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, including the Protection of Civil Rights Act (prevention of Untouchability) 1955, 1976, and the judicial interpretations or interventions over a period of 70 years, is termed ‘a saga of social justice drama in India’. The report opines that the appointment of the SC, ST, Minorities and Backward Classes commissions indicate the government’s intentions and obligations as per the mandate of the Constitution. However, the imagined constitutional objectives of social justice seem to have not been realized due to litigation. The issue of social justice as part of the routine prevention of untouchability cases is not limited to the broad understanding of the term Dalit at the all-India level and goes beyond. The report brings out a significant fact that some of the untouchables of North India like in UP, Bihar etc are listed as Scheduled castes there and are recorded as Backward Classes (BCs) in South India. It is difficult; the report agrees to understand the social categories without looking at the evolution of each caste group in the social history of India. The report however, has not gone deep in to that dimension here.

The first part of the report examined various aspects of each dimension, namely the Economic and Social measures of justice. After identifying the dimensions, the data was normalised. In the second stage, the indicators for economic justice, consisting of monthly per capita expenditure are considered. The maximum and minimum values of each dimension were obtained from the internal dimensions of the factors considered. For example, the four categories of social groups SC, ST, OBC, and others for which data are made available have been tested as to which group was the most deprived in terms of their mean values, and the group with the least value was used for the calculation of the indicator (the data are given in the appendix Tables not in the text). As noted above, the economic dimension of MPCE adequately explains literacy; therefore, it is dropped at the stage of calculating the index. Finally, the ESJI is arrived at by combining the three dimensions and dividing it by 1 by 3 to arrive at the average and subtracting the value from 1 to arrive at the comprehensive index. The ESJI value indicates deprivation, with zero indicating absolute justice and one indicating Absolute Injustice or Deprivation.

The significant finding of the report is estimation of Wealth Stolen from Native Indians including ‘Untouchables and lower (depressed) castes’ who suffered the loss of lands cleared and cultivated by them. These were ultimately stolen by the traivarnikas[1] with the support of the state, argues the report Native Indians have remained landless and poor. Yet, they were the ones who were involved in the production process and created wealth. The report obtained data from the Madison study on the World GDP and GDP for India from the year 0 to 1973 as published by OECD. The data was used to arrive at the contribution of ‘lower (depressed) castes’ to India GDP and its proportion in the World economy. It is surprising to find that one fourth of the Wealth of the World was created by these ‘depressed’ castes of India amounting to around $ 25 billion in the year 0 and this figure could have reached $ 25 trillion cumulatively by the end of 1000 AD known as the age of conflicts and regional satraps. The Report notes (observes) that a vast portion of India’s historical wealth was created by depressed (lower) castes but appropriated by “non-productive groups”. The report has cited the Oxfam Report on India 2025 to show that the amount of colonial plunder of the British India is almost equal to the amount estimated to have been stolen by the upper castes from Dalits and Bahujans. This is a very important statistic that might, in future, lead to probing debates across activist groups.

A significant portion of the text is dedicated to the unequal distribution of assets and wealth.  Historically, Dalits (Scheduled Castes) were forbidden from owning land, gold, or weapons. As of 2015-16, the average land holdings of Scheduled Castes have dropped to 0.78 hectares, and roughly 58% of them remain landless at all India. The author of the report introduces the concept of “Caste-Based Cronyism,” arguing that modern economic liberalisation has primarily benefited the “Dvija” (upper-caste) groups through Multi-Caste Corporations (MCC), effectively recreating Varnashrama Dharma in the 21st century.

Social Injustice is measured in terms of the atrocities data for SC and ST obtained from the NCRB reports. It is noted that despite Article 17 of the Constitution, the report notes a sharp rise in atrocities. NCRB data shows atrocities on Dalits increased from 17,667 in 1990 to 53,886 in 2020, more than threefold raise.  In the context of women empowerment as part of Social Justice the text of the report recognizes the “Founding Mothers” of the Constitution (e.g., Sarojini Naidu, Amrit Kaur) who fought for women’s rights and the Hindu Code Bill against “blatant sexism” in the Assembly. The judiciary is critiqued for its “non-representative character,” with allegations that it remains influenced by a small number of elite families (as reported by Prof Mark Gallanter etc.), often leading to the acquittal of those accused of atrocities against Dalits implying that it did not result in reducing the intensity of injustice. Apart from the NCRB data, the report makes use of the NHRC data on human rights violations recorded by caste and state to arrive at the Economic and Social Justice Index.

The report proposes a new quantitative tool, the ESJI, inspired by the UNDP’s Human Development Index. This is calculated using the three dimensions: MPCE: Monthly Per Capita Expenditure of SC households, SC and ST Atrocities: Rates recorded by the NCRB per lakh of population and Human Rights Violations: Cases recorded by the NHRC.  The index aims to provide a measurable “deprivation index” where a value of zero indicates absolute justice and one indicates absolute injustice.  The report concludes that while the Constitution provides a mandate for justice, institutional structures—particularly the judiciary and the market have failed to gift justice to the victims and the same have largely helped to reinforce traditional caste-based inequalities rather than dismantling them.

The report notes that Justice is not quantifiable, but its impact can be envisaged in terms of the dimensions through which it affects the human condition. There are several measures developed and used to state the economic circumstances of the people like the PQLI (Physical Quality of Life) Index constructed by ODA in the 1970s. There are other indices that are now being used to quantify and analyse human quality of life, economic and social development indicators along with the aggregate concept of GDP, HDI etc. Against this background, the objective of this report as claimed by the author is to determine where Economic and Social Justice, as defined in the text, stands at different periods of time in India. The values are arranged such that the highest value indicates more deprivation and the lowest value nearing zero indicates perfect justice. The ESJI was 0.212 in 2011 and climbed to 0.305 in 2023. This means that economic and social justice deprivation has almost doubled over 12 years in India.

Economic and social justice are interdependent, complimentary and it is only a comprehensive approach that will tremendously help India grow. Such ‘growth’ is simply not possible unless the fruits of development reach the most marginalised sections. The report examines state wise indicators in terms of the above-mentioned dimensions and found the major former BIMARU states, Bihar, U.P, Rajasthan that are being touted now as improving in terms of economic indicators like per capita income or expenditure, are however consistent in getting higher ranks of deprivations except U.P that records minor change.

In 2011, the ESJI of Bihar was 0.141, M.P 0.184, Rajasthan 0.225 and U.P 0.510. The ESJI for 2023 for Bihar is 0.281, M.P 0.412, U.P 0.443 and Rajasthan 0.433. Uttar Pradesh (UP) that had an index of 0.443 in 2011 has the highest rank among the states now and has lowered its value to 0.470. Rajasthan with 0.480 has replaced U.P in the dubious position of highest rank in 2023.  These five states are listing as the better performing West Bengal 0.040, Assam 0.041, Chhattisgarh 0.074, Tamil Nadu 0.099, Punjab 0.101 and Maharashtra 0.107 in 2011. The same states remained as better though their ranks have altered. In 2023 Assam with 0.077, West Bengal 0.110, Chhattisgarh 0.112, Jharkhand 0.167 and Punjab 0.162 are found to be in a better position with lower ranks. Interestingly Jharkhand a predominantly tribal state joined the ranks of better performed states in 2023 and Maharashtra slid down one mark in its rank.

Among the South Indian states, the ranks of Andhra Pradesh in 2011 was 13 with 0.196, Kerala with 0.317 in 16^th rank were among the lowest five ranks. It is noted that in 2023 Telangana joined the ranks of lowest performing states with 0.380 at the 20th rank and Andhra Pradesh has improved its rank with a value of 0.285. The ranks and values of ESJI are given for all the states and Union Territories are given in the Appendix to the Report.

The author is very pragmatic in accepting the limitations of the study: restrictions in data and the inadequacies of reports of the government for an all-India study of this nature.   However, the estimated indices to quantify and explain how India is performing in terms of the Constitutional objectives of Economic and Social Justice is a first rigorous endeavour and commendable. With all these limitations, this is an excellent report with useful parameters and matrix on economic, social and other related issues. These tables and data are presented in the Appendix of Tables for reference to assist scholars and activists and lead them towards compiling more such indices.

The report is not a simple exercise of research and reflection. The exercise reveals the author’s commitment to the most marginalized peoples, Constitutional categories of persons that were promised justice, economic and social about 75 years ago and who have suffered betrayal for decades since. This section is also the major segment of our population.

The study is not just presentation of figures and statistical tables to substantiate the arguments, but the sheer writing —sentences with emotions carried through the paragraphs reflect the agony and despair the author experienced both as a scholar and perhaps as a silent worker. Frankly speaking, much has been talked about Human Development Reports but they fail to take into account Caste discrimination and other systematic deprivations that are both social as well as political.

Prof K.S.Chalam should be applauded for the effort of producing such a report despite acute hardships of access, especially because most of data relied upon is institutional data. It is also important that the publication of such/similar reports becomes an annual feature to assist and guide policy makers who frame policies for the widest sections of Indians.

We hope that NITI Ayog and other important institution both at the Centre as well as in the states will benefit from these reports and encourage each state to engage with such an approach to publish HDIs on social, economic and political justice. The Institute for Economic and Social justice along with Prof Chalam’s vast experience in socio-economic and political economy studies should continue this exercise and bring in greater nuances into the public debate. The report is an important step in that direction.

Pre-launch orders (before May 31, 2026 are discounted and the price for the single copy is at Rs 400 including postage charges during this period) Contact for copies: Email: Chalamks@hotmail.com

[1] Traivarnikas (or Traivarṇika) is a Sanskrit term referring to the members of the three upper classes (varnas) in traditional Hindu society: the Brahmins (priests/scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors/rulers), and Vaishyas (merchants/traders); the term translates directly to “those of the three colors” or “three classes.” It serves to group these three communities together and distinguish them from the Shudras (laborers) and Avarnas (those considered outside the traditional four-fold Varna system).

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The post India Economic & Social Justice Report 2025: First-ever study measures constitutional justice across union and state governments, have they delivered? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Millions of people sharply criticized the contrast between the approach taken in Karnataka in 2018 and that later adopted in Tamil Nadu. They wondered what strategy or constitutional reasoning lay behind that decision. The Union Government, particularly the Union Home Ministry, also bears responsibility for protecting constitutional federalism in such situations.

If such a long leash could be offered in Bengaluru, could a similar blueprint unfold for Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Vijay in a fractured Tamil Nadu Assembly? In a hypothetical scenario where the state is staring at a deeply divided mandate, what determines who grabs the crown? Is it a masterstroke strategy, a calculated constitutional interpretation, a political illusion, or sheer cinematic magic?

A Matinee Idol as CM

Vijay’s transition from a cinematic powerhouse to a frontline political contender has broken the conventional speed limits of Dravidian politics. As a young Scheduled Caste Christian leader, his political identity carries deep symbolic resonance:

• Breaking the Reservation Mold: Defying traditional identity politics, Vijay chose to contest and win from two unreserved general constituencies.
• Rapid Mainstream Acceptance: Within days of the election results, he transformed TVK from a nascent political startup into a formidable claimant for the Chief Minister’s office.
• Strategic Representation: For his supporters, his ascent represents a generational shift, a rare moment where a Dalit-Christian leader commands center stage in Tamil Nadu without relying on traditional Dravidian umbrellas.

During the height of this post-election instability, the acting Governor of Tamil Nadu, Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, holding temporary additional charge, maintained a calculated, unusual silence. Free from dramatic public posturing or polarizing declarations, the Raj Bhavan silently allowed the political gears to turn toward an eventually stable resolution.

When TVK initially staked its claim with the backing of roughly 108 legislators, critics pointed out that Vijay lacked an absolute majority. Vijay countered by demanding the right to prove his strength on the floor. This brought a classic constitutional debate back to life: does the “single largest party” hold an inherent right to form a government?

The short answer is no. The phrase “single largest party” is conspicuously absent from the text of the Constitution of India, nor is there any legally binding convention that forces a Governor to invite them first. Once sworn in, the authority of the office is to engineer defections and gather support over several days or weeks.

SC radically redefined federalism.

In the landmark S. R. Bommai v. Union of India case, the Supreme Court radically redefined federalism and gubernatorial discretion. The judgment laid down ironclad principles that directly govern hung assemblies:

• The Assembly Floor is Supreme: Majority support cannot be assessed through headcount lists in Raj Bhavans or resort roll-calls; it must be tested exclusively on the floor of the House.
• No Partisan Preferences: Governors cannot act on personal political whims or align their decisions with partisan agendas.
• Limits on Article 356: The threat of President’s Rule cannot be wielded arbitrarily to dismantle or prevent elected governments.
• No Studio Mandates: Legitimate majorities are manufactured through constitutional processes, not in television studios or luxury hotels.

Commissions and Conventions

While the Constitution is silent, successive expert panels, most notably the Sarkaria Commission and the Punchhi Commission, have outlined a clear hierarchy of preferences for Governors navigating a fractured mandate.

Though these guidelines lack the force of codified law, they heavily guide gubernatorial ethics. In this instance, constitutional strategist Vikas Bansode reportedly advised that the Governor’s primary duty is not just tracking down the biggest single entity, but actively facilitating a regime that promises long-term structural stability.

This explains why a Governor functioning under a BJP-led Central Government acted with unexpected institutional restraint, deviating from past controversies. In places like Goa and Manipur (2017), governors skipped the single largest party (Congress) to invite BJP-led coalitions that demonstrated stable post-poll numbers. Conversely, rushed swearing-in’s in Karnataka (2018) and Maharashtra (2019) ended in public embarrassment and abrupt resignations within days.

Vijay’s transition

Vijay’s transition from a vulnerable claimant with 108 seats to an unassailable leader was a masterclass in quiet political realignment. The operation moved through three distinct phases:

1. The Initial Staking (108 MLAs): On May 5th, Vijay approached Raj Bhavan with a base of 108 legislators. The crucial momentum shift came when 5 Congress MLAs broke ranks to back him. Remarkably, they did this while their party formally remained a part of the DMK-led INDIA alliance—moving like silent grandmasters on a multi-dimensional chessboard.
2. The Governor’s Validation (120 MLAs): Backed by the Bansode stability doctrine, the Governor permitted a floor test once Vijay’s consolidated file reached 120 MLAs.
3. The Coronation (144 MLAs): During the actual voting process on the floor of the House, the numbers swelled dramatically to 144, transforming a fragile minority into an absolute, commanding majority.

Twin titans of Dravidian politics

Vijay’s rise evokes memories of iconic actor-politicians like M.G. Ramachandran, J. Jayalalithaa, and N.T. Rama Rao. Yet, his structural consolidation raises deep, lingering questions about what truly transpired behind the scenes.

If the twin titans of Dravidian politics- the DMK and the AIADMK- wanted to stop TVK, they possessed the combined numbers to do so. Why did they falter?

• The DMK’s Calculated Retreat: Former Chief Minister M.K. Stalin publicly announced that the DMK would not destabilize a TVK government for at least six months. During the final vote, his party staged a strategic walkout rather than voting Vijay down.
• The AIADMK’s Internal Fractures: The AIADMK, traditionally aligned with the BJP, suffered sudden internal rifts at the exact moment of the vote, effectively paralyzing their opposition and indirectly strengthening Vijay’s hand.

Ultimately, this sequence of events enters the realm of political philosophy. Was Vijay the ultimate architect of his own destiny, a lucky beneficiary of a fractured era, or an unsuspecting protagonist in a larger, intricate script written within the quiet corridors of Raj Bhavan? Thus, the Governor steered Tamil Nadu, protecting the constitutional propriety.

While the public witnessed a spectacular, cinematic climb to the apex of power, the real puppeteers steering the strings may choose to remain forever invisible.

Dr. Madabhushi Sridhar, Professor of Media Law, LL.D., Advisor, Mahindra University, Hyderabad.

Courtesy: CounterCurrents

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A bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan granted bail to Syed Iftikhar Andrabi, a Jammu and Kashmir resident accused in a narco-terror case investigated by the National Investigation Agency, after he spent almost six years in custody awaiting trial. In doing so, the Court delivered one of its strongest recent reaffirmations of the landmark three-judge bench ruling in Union of India v. KA Najeeb, holding that constitutional courts cannot permit indefinite pre-trial incarceration under the guise of national security.

The Court unequivocally declared; “Even under the UAPA, bail is the rule and jail is the exception.”

The ruling assumes added significance because the bench simultaneously expressed “serious reservations” about the January 2025 judgment in Gulfisha Fatima v. State — the decision that denied bail to activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case. The Court also disapproved of the 2024 ruling in Gurwinder Singh v. Union of India, observing that both decisions appeared to dilute binding principles laid down by larger benches.

As reported by Live Law, the judgment contains unusually sharp observations on judicial discipline, prolonged incarceration, and the constitutional dangers posed by restrictive interpretations of UAPA bail provisions.

Court relies on NCRB data to highlight “overwhelming possibility of acquittal”

One of the most striking aspects of the judgment is the Court’s reliance on official National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics placed before Parliament by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

Referring to conviction data between 2019 and 2023, the bench noted that UAPA conviction rates across India ranged only between 1.5% and 4%. In Jammu and Kashmir, conviction rates remained below 1% throughout the period, touching a maximum of merely 0.89% in 2022 and standing at zero in 2019.

The Court observed that these figures expose the deeply troubling reality that undertrials are often incarcerated for years despite the overwhelming probability of eventual acquittal.

“For all India figures, we have 2% to 6% conviction, meaning thereby that there is 94% to 98% possibility of acquittal in such cases in the country. In so far as the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, the annual rate of conviction is always less than 1%. It means that at the end of the trial there is 99% possibility of acquittal in such cases.”

These observations, as per LiveLaw, form one of the strongest judicial acknowledgments in recent years of the structural imbalance between prosecution and liberty under anti-terror laws. The Court effectively questioned the legitimacy of incarcerating individuals for years while trials proceed at an extraordinarily slow pace despite minimal conviction outcomes nationally.

Reaffirmation of KA Najeeb and constitutional limits on UAPA

At the heart of the ruling lies a forceful reaffirmation of KA Najeeb, the 2021 three-judge bench judgment that recognised prolonged incarceration and delay in trial as independent constitutional grounds for granting bail under the UAPA.

The bench clarified that Section 43D(5) of the UAPA, which imposes stringent restrictions on bailm cannot be interpreted in a manner that extinguishes Article 21 protections.

Justice Bhuyan’s judgment noted that KA Najeeb was specifically intended to prevent anti-terror legislation from becoming a mechanism for punitive incarceration without trial.

“A plain reading of Najeeb will show that it was trying to prevent precisely this possibility from arising, when it cautioned that Section 43D(5) must not become the sole metric for denial of bail, causing wholesale breach of the constitutional right to speedy trial.”

The Court further held that the earlier judgment in National Investigation Agency v. Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali cannot be read as authorising indefinite detention merely because a prima facie case exists. Rejecting attempts to use Watali as a near-absolute bar on bail, the Court observed that such an interpretation would fundamentally undermine constitutional protections.

Sharp criticism of smaller benches diluting larger bench decisions

The judgment is also notable for its unusually direct criticism of smaller benches of the Supreme Court for progressively weakening larger bench precedents without formally referring matters to a larger bench.

The Court observed; “A judgment rendered by a bench of lesser strength is bound by the law declared by the bench of greater strength. Judicial discipline mandates that such a binding precedent must either be followed or, in case of doubt, be referred to a larger bench.”

It added; “A smaller bench cannot dilute, circumvent or disregard the ratio of a larger bench.”

Without expressly overruling Gulfisha Fatima or Gurwinder Singh, the Court made clear that the approaches adopted in those rulings were difficult to reconcile with KA Najeeb.

The bench also recorded concern over what it described as a trend of smaller benches “hollowing out” the constitutional force of larger bench decisions without openly disagreeing with them. These observations are institutionally significant because both Gurwinder Singh and Gulfisha Fatima were delivered by two-judge benches despite KA Najeeb having been decided by a larger three-judge bench.

“Serious reservations” over Delhi Riots bail judgment

The Court’s remarks on Gulfisha Fatima v. State are among the strongest judicial criticisms directed at a recent Supreme Court bail ruling. The bench specifically objected to the interpretation that KA Najeeb applies only in narrow or exceptional factual situations.

Justice Bhuyan observed; “We have serious reservations about judgment in Gulfisha Fatima. The judgment in Gulfisha Fatima would have us believe that Najeeb is only a narrow and exceptional departure from Section 43D(5). It is this hollowing out of the import of the observations in Najeeb that we are concerned with.”

The Court emphasised that KA Najeeb remains binding law and cannot be diluted by trial courts, High Courts, or benches of lesser numerical strength within the Supreme Court itself. The judgment also disapproved of aspects of the Gulfisha Fatima ruling that effectively curtailed the ability of accused persons to renew bail pleas for extended periods.

The Supreme Court’s January 2026 judgment in Gulfisha Fatima v. State arose from bail pleas filed by several accused in the 2020 Delhi riots “larger conspiracy” case prosecuted under the UAPA. A bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice N V Anjaria granted bail to Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Mohammad Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmed after nearly six years of incarceration, holding that their alleged roles were comparatively limited and ancillary. However, the Court denied bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, observing that prosecution material placed them on a “qualitatively different footing” as alleged “ideological drivers” and central conspirators in the riots case. The Court held that the statutory embargo under Section 43D(5) of the UAPA continued to apply against them because the prosecution had crossed the threshold of establishing a prima facie case. The judgment remains contentious because, despite acknowledging prolonged incarceration and delay in trial, the Court held that constitutional concerns under Article 21 had not yet overridden the statutory restrictions on bail for Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. Detailed report may be read here.

Court rejects “two-prong test” for bail

The Court further criticised the “two-prong test” evolved in Gurwinder Singh, under which courts were expected to deny bail once the prosecution established a prima facie case. According to the bench, this framework effectively transforms pre-trial incarceration into punishment itself.

Justice Bhuyan warned; “If this test is accepted, the State needs only satisfy a low prima facie threshold while the trial may continue for years, with the result that pre-trial incarceration begins to acquire a post-trial punitive character.”

The Court observed that KA Najeeb had specifically warned against precisely such outcomes.

“The more serious the accusation, the speedier the trial should be”

Reiterating the centrality of Article 21 protections, the bench observed that serious accusations demand faster trials, not greater tolerance for prolonged detention.

“Ideally, the more serious the accusations are, the speedier the trial should be.”

The Court also referred to its 2024 ruling in Sheikh Javed Iqbal v. State, which similarly followed KA Najeeb in granting bail due to prolonged delay in trial.

Background of the case

Syed Iftikhar Andrabi, a resident of Handwara in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir, was arrested by the NIA on June 11, 2020. The agency alleged that he was part of a cross-border narcotics syndicate that procured heroin from the Tangdhar border region and channelled proceeds to organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.

He was prosecuted under provisions of the NDPS Act, Sections 17, 38 and 40 of the UAPA, and Section 120B of the IPC. A Special NIA Court rejected his bail application in August 2024. The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court later refused bail on August 19, 2025, holding that the seriousness of the allegations outweighed the case for release despite the lengthy custody period.

Before the Supreme Court, it was pointed out that the prosecution had cited over 320 witnesses while only a handful had been examined so far — making the likelihood of early completion of trial extremely remote.

Senior Advocate Shadan Farasat appeared on behalf of Andrabi.

Bail granted subject to conditions

Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court directed Andrabi’s release on bail subject to conditions imposed by the Special NIA Court. The Court directed him to surrender his passport and mark attendance at the Handwara police station once every fortnight.

A major intervention in UAPA bail jurisprudence

The judgment is likely to emerge as a major constitutional reference point in future UAPA bail litigation. By foregrounding the right to speedy trial, condemning prolonged incarceration, relying on NCRB conviction data, and cautioning against judicial dilution of larger bench precedents, the Court has attempted to restore constitutional discipline within anti-terror jurisprudence.

The ruling also sends a significant institutional message: that personal liberty cannot be indefinitely suspended through procedural delay, and that anti-terror legislation cannot become a constitutional vacuum where Article 21 protections cease to operate. At a moment when UAPA prosecutions increasingly raise concerns regarding prolonged detention, delayed trials, and the criminalisation of dissent, the judgment may mark an important judicial effort to reclaim constitutional safeguards from the expanding shadow of preventive incarceration.

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The post Supreme Court reasserts KA Najeeb, warns against “hollowing out” constitutional protections in UAPA cases; questions Umar Khalid bail verdict appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The team, formed by civil rights group Jan Hastakshep included Supreme Court senior advocate S.S. Nehra, former Hindu College professor Ish Mishra, retired IFS officer Ashok Sharma, senior journalist Anil Dubey, and senior advocate M.Z. Ali.

The team visited Noida on April 24 and spoke to workers across multiple industrial units, shopkeepers and other affected residents on the issue.

According to the statement released by the team, investigators have found no evidence to support allegations circulated by sections of the administration and media that foreign elements were behind the protests.

Instead, the team reported how, the anger among the workers had been building for years over low wages, rising inflation and comparisons with higher minimum wages in neighbouring Delhi and Haryana. The agitating workers told the team that factories relocating from Delhi and Gurugram to Noida continued paying lower wages after shifting operations, despite higher pay scales prevailing in those regions.

The fact-finding group said that this dissatisfaction intensified after workers learned that wages at units in Haryana –barely 170 kilometres away–had increased significantly following a hike in minimum wages there. This comparison, combined with stagnant wages in Noida for 10 years, reportedly triggered the initial sit-in protest at a garment-manufacturing unit in Sector 83 earlier this month. According to the Fact-finding team’s statement, protests spread across industrial clusters in Sectors 59, 60, 62, 83 and 84, eventually drawing tens of thousands of workers onto the streets. The team also alleged that police action escalated tensions and that more than 1,000 workers were detained, with some families not informed of their whereabouts for several days.

The team of investigators noted that the state government’s subsequent actions, including issuing notices to 43 contractors, cancelling licences of 10 contractors and announcing a 21 per cent wage increase, indicated acknowledgement of the irregularities in wage practices rather than evidence of any external conspiracy.

Significantly, a trade union leader who had worked in a multinational company, also told the team that two decades ago, wages were not an issue in NOIDA and Greater NOIDA because wages here were higher than in other states. However, conditions have changed over the past 20 years.

Disparate wages: While wages increased in Delhi and Haryana, they did not increase in Uttar Pradesh, and companies arbitrarily set their own minimum wages. This difference also significantly increased exploitation. He added that most of NOIDA industries operate with only contract labour, with companies hiring workers through contractors who provide no security or other benefits.

The team concluded that the unrest reflected long-standing labour grievances rooted in wage stagnation and rising living costs, and called for implementation of revised minimum wages, linking wages to inflation, and withdrawal of cases against workers involved in the protests.

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