बेबाक · Editorial
Courts Cannot Be the Republic's Emergency Administration
A single week of judicial orders — on treatment, compensation and choked caseloads — shows courts filling gaps administrations should not have left open.
A Week on the Docket
Read together, the week's court reporting describes not a dozen unrelated disputes but one institution repeatedly stepping into gaps left by others. A Chief Justice of India-led bench said pellet guns may be used only in "exceptional cases" and asked the NCT government to ensure injured Jantar Mantar protesters receive treatment. The Supreme Court ordered Rajasthan to pay one lakh rupees to a government official as compensation for harassment linked to political interference in a prosecution sanction. It asked the Ministry to facilitate DNA identification of Indians killed in the Russia-Ukraine war and ensure legal aid for compensation claims. Each order is narrow. The pattern is not: courts are being asked to do work administrations should have completed.
The Case for Reach
There is a principled defence of this activism, and it deserves stating at full strength. When an official is harassed through political interference, when families of Indians killed in war need identification of mortal remains and legal aid, when stray-animal road accidents go uncompensated for want of any mechanism, someone must act. The Supreme Court's direction to the Centre and states to develop a mechanism for solatium in accidents caused by animals fills a real void. A court that waits for perfect institutional tidiness while citizens go unremedied is abdicating, not restraining. Constitutional courts exist to convert legal duty into enforceable action when administrations fail to move. This is not overreach when citizens face injury, delay or official neglect.
The Case for Restraint
The opposing argument is equally serious. Courts are not built to administer. When the Kerala High Court must direct the State to operationalise promised NDPS Courts against 8,422 pending NDPS cases, it is enforcing an executive timetable that should not have slipped into litigation. When the Supreme Court moots a protocol for access to its livestream archives — after a July 24 interim order barred circulation of livestream proceedings on digital platforms, which activists said reversed the principle of open justice — the judiciary is regulating its own public record in real time. Exceptional power must remain exceptional; open justice cannot become licence for commercial exploitation or misuse. But every hour a bench spends supervising delivery is an hour not spent adjudicating.
Justice, Not Theatre
Criminal accountability demands the same sobriety. A Delhi court's life sentence for a former councillor and four others in the killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma during the 2020 riots belongs in a courtroom, not partisan theatre. The verdict must be respected for what it is: a judicial finding after trial, subject to appeal, not a slogan for any camp. The Meghalaya High Court's July 31 concern over the alleged assault and parading of an advocate — accused of molesting a female law intern, but still protected by law — underlines the same principle. And the Allahabad High Court's order for two adult sisters to be brought before it, after they informed the court through counsel that they had voluntarily converted from Hinduism to Islam without pressure, force or inducement, guards individual agency from coercion. Justice loses legitimacy when mobs, officials or political voices decide guilt before institutions do.
Repair the State
The remedy is not fewer court orders but faster administrative delivery, so that fewer are needed. State governments should fund and staff the courts they have already promised — beginning with the NDPS Courts Kerala's judiciary still awaits — on published, audited timelines. The Union government should build the compensation and DNA-identification mechanisms the Supreme Court has flagged, rather than await further direction. Police forces need written protocols on crowd-control weapons, medical response after injury, and protection of the accused from non-state violence. Prosecution-sanction decisions must be insulated from political interference, so that no official is again forced to seek vindication through compensation ordered by court. India does not need weaker courts; it needs stronger institutions outside court.
A republic cannot run on judicial rescue missions; it needs administrations that treat legality as daily discipline.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyThe State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
Directive PrincipleThe right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce fundamental rights — called by Dr Ambedkar "the heart and soul of the Constitution." The courts can issue writs such as habeas corpus and mandamus.
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
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An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →